Thursday

Script Usage (To Edit Multiple Drawings Quickly)

11 Comments Feb-14-2008 | Posted by Eren Pala | Printable Version | Level |

Hi,

I had to edit 300 different blocks at the start of this week. For each drawing, I had to open them one by one, repeat same process again and then save and exit from them. Instead, I wrote a script to ease the process and AutoCAD do the process by itself for me. This allows me work on other drawings and it is like I didn’t do anything wrong at all. When I was working on my script, I remember you, dear bloggers, and wish to share it with you.

Like us, most of you probably have block libraries and drawing files of your own. One day if you have to edit a block through all of these drawings, this boring work costs a lot of time and also a lot of work. Moreover, opening a document and doing same processes again and again makes you careless and thus; you will probably start to make mistakes. Let me start to explain how to write and use scripts.

Firstly, we have to list the drawings that we want to edit. The list should contain drawing names each on a different line and should be listed downwards. You can think that, it can take very long time, ‘These scripts are supposed to fasten my drawing time’ etc. however; forming the list is very easy. Open ‘Run’ from Start Menu (Windows Operating System) and type “cmd” for DOS screen. Follow the steps below.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\orhan>cd \myDrawings

C:\myDrawings>dir *.dwg /b > list.txt

C:\myDrawings>_

The “dir *.dwg /b > list.txt” command will create the LIST.TXT file containing the drawing (DWG) files list. We’ll use MS-Word to convert our TXT file to AutoCAD SCR file.

Fig.1 Our TXT file

Fig.2 AutoCAD script file

You do not have to arrange the list by your hand; you can utilize a word macro. Open the list in MS Word and with using the macro; names of the drawings become; Open ‘Drawing Name’ and they are followed by the commands we want to run. You can download our sample from here.

Fig.3 – Our MS Word Macro

Run this macro in MS Word and save your file as TEXT. Don’t forget to name your file as SCR (e.g. “convert.scr”)

Before running the script, we are going to change one last thing. We have to define the directory that contains drawings as Support file search path since script contains only the drawing names. To do this, add the folder that contains the drawings into the Support file search path in the “tools->options” menu file tab in Autocad.

Figure 4

We can run the script now. Click the “Run Script” in the “tools” menu and select the script file. Autocad will do the rest. You can use lisp files with scripts to do more complicated editing.

Regards.

Related Files:

• script.zip (contains MS Word and VB Class files)

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