Viewing AutoCAD Objects
Visual Lisp has a great way of letting you
view AutoCAD Objects by allowing you to "walk" through the
drawing database. Let's have a wee look at what's on offer. Open AutoCAD
with a blank drawing, and then open the Visual Lisp Editor. Let's set up
what information we would like to see first :
- Choose "Tools"
- "Environment Options" - "General Options".
- Click the
"Diagnostic tab" in the "General Options" window.
- Select "Inspect
Drawing Objects Verbosely to view detailed entity information.
- Now choose
"View" - "Browse Drawing Database" - "Browse
Tables".
The "Drawing Tables" Inspection
window will now open :
That's very nice!! We have a list of the symbol tables in our drawing.
Now, double-click on <Layers> :
Even better! Now we've got a list of all the Layers in our drawing.
Double-click on Layer <2> :
Crikey, now we've got a list of all the Layers attributes
"including" the AutoLisp Entity list!!!
Now draw a line, a circle, and some text anywhere in your drawing and
then select "View" - "Browse
Drawing Database" - "Browse All Entities". The following
Inspect window will open :
Now double-click on <TEXT> :
Now we've got a list of all the text
attributes.
Just one more so that you get the idea.
This time choose "View" - "Browse Drawing Database" -
"Browse Selection". The AutoCAD window will appear prompting you
to select objects. Do just that :
A list of all entities contained in your
selection set will be displayed. This time double-click on the
<Line> object :
Again a list of the Objects attributes are displayed.
Insert a few more Objects into your drawing such as blocks, blocks with
attributes, polylines, hatches,etc.
This set of tools gives you a good idea of how the AutoCAD Object Model is
put together. Play around the them, you'll learn a lot........ |