External mtext editor not loading

Rick Kaplan
Rick Kaplan
in 2D Drafting

There appears to be a bug in BricsCAD 2011 that causes our external multi-text editor to fail:

 

Our multi-text editor is specialized at creating and editing soil descriptions in our AutoLISP based boring log program.  It works well in all versions of AutoCAD and BricsCAD 2010.  It fails, however, in BricsCAD 2011.

 

I’ve tested this on both my development and test system and got the same results.

 

My first thought was that the command sequence for the “mtext” command might have changed, but I tested the command switches manually and everything works the same as in BricsCAD 2010. 

 

Our mtext editor is a VB6 application that reads information passed to it from BricsCAD via a text file.  Our program fools the mtext command into thinking it’s creating new text (since there’s no “mtedit” command in BricsCAD), thus opening the external mtext editor “strata_port.exe”, which has the text to be edited already there – from the text file.

 

So I thought, ok, it’s not creating the text file properly – this could cause our mtext editor not to load if the “txt” heading was empty – but I tested this and BricsCAD 2011 is indeed creating the text file properly.

 

So, I’m stumped.  Calling the “mtext” command manually with the text file present and with a soil description works.  Our metext editor comes up and works fine.  Calling it from a LISP expression:

 

;Setup external mtedit application.

(setvar "mtexted" "c:\\strata_port\\strata_port_mt.exe")

 

;AutoCAD

(if (and (/= (getvar "acadver") "15i")(/= (getvar "acadver") "17.1 Bricscad) (/= (getvar "acadver") "17.1 Bricscad))

        (command "-mtext" (list 1.64 sddy) "w" "2.4100" "")

        (command "mtedit" (list (entlast)'(0 0 0))))    )

 

;BricsCAD 6-8x, 2010

(if (or (= (getvar "acadver") "15i")(= (getvar "acadver") "17.1 Bricscad))

        (command "mtext" (list 1.64 sddy) "w" "2.4100" "temp"))

 

;BricsCAD 2011

(if (= (getvar "acadver") "17.2 Bricscad")

        (command "mtext" (list 1.64 sddy) "w" "2.4100" "temp"))

 

The mtext editor will not open.

 

Like I said, it works fine in AutoCAD 2006-2011, BricsCAD 8x-2010.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Rick Kaplan

ECS, Ltd

Comments

  • Dmitry Gavrilov
    Dmitry Gavrilov

    Hello Rick,

    I think MTEXT behaves here like as in AutoCAD now, that is it does not open external editor when run in non-interactive mode (in this case - from lisp). And you can use DDEDIT similarly to AutoCAD's MTEDIT:

    (command "DDEDIT" (entlast) "")

     

    Best regards,

    Dmitry.

  • Rick Kaplan
    Rick Kaplan

    Dimitry:

    Thanks for the quick response.

    Worked like a champ!

    Rick

     

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