Drawing lists

Ben Jedrej

How do people create drawing lists? I have just tried to extract attributes from multiple layout title blocks in multiple drawings but the data extraction tool doesn't seem to work very well in multiple drawings. Is it simple to use the sheet set tool or will I have make significant changes to templates etc for it to work? I have no experience with sheet sets.

Many thanks,

Ben

RSW

A workaround could be to use JTB BatchAttEdit https://bricsys.com/applications/a/?jtb-batchattedit-a1309-al2288

It is a batch attribute editor that allows you to edit multiple attributes of multiple block in multiple drawings in a spreadsheet kind of dialog, take a look at the link for more details. The drawings don't have to be open in BricsCAD, you can load them into the dialog window through a file open dialog.

You can then filter for e.g. title blocks to show only those and then export that filtered list to an Excel or delimited file. That way you will have a list of all drawings. There will be some columns you may want to remove afterwards such as the file path and attributes that may not be relevant for your purpose.

It is also useful for e.g. changing a common attribute for all drawings in one go.

MDunn

Haven't tried RSW's suggestion, but have often used a lisp routine that exports TB metadata to a *.xls file which is then sortable etc. Great for creating Dwg Index *.xls files which is what I use it for. Does require editing lisp routine according to the required metadata desired. It searches for the Block name & the metadata w/in that block of the defined TagNames. I have one for TB data (DwgName, Title Lines 1,2,3) & another for AKA data (Also Known As) for other names the dwg has been named. Got it from Wessel Eijkman in 2008 & have use it half a dozen times a year for various data dumps needed for lists of dwgs.
Will post if there is desire for it.
Mike

Terry Dotson

If you were to consider third party add-ons, DotSoft's ToolPac for BricsCAD contains a Drawing Catalog tool. It can list one or more drawings per row, include the preview bitmap, path, name, date/time and size properties along with any or all of the extended properties found in the DWGPROPS dialog.

Ben Jedrej

Hi,

RSW, That JTB tool looks really good. I will give it a try.

MDunn, can you post the Lisp routine please, it sounds like it might be useful as well.

Many thanks,

Ben

MDunn

ATT2XL-TB.lsp
Extracts Tag data from Title Block, puts it in an Excel output file along w/ DwgName.
Also creates an Error file.
Notice personalization edits to be done @ each:
;;EDIT
Such as: BlockName = TitleBlock (edit per needs)
TagName1, TagName2, etc.
The Defun (launches routine) is a simple C:SS, which can be edited as desired.
Note there are a number of Rem’d lines (;) which are not being used in this routine, but could be edited & used if desired.
In this particular instance I was only after Title Lines 1, 2, 3 & the DwgName for each extraction. So the DwgName proceeded each set of title lines in the xls output file.
In the xls output file the DwgName, TagName1, TagName2, TagName3 are listed in columns. I later concatenated the title lines into 1 column in the xls file.
This could be expanded to include other TB data or other blocks/tags for needed data extraction.

Please let me know how you end up using this file, particularly if you expand upon it. Would be interesting to see where it all goes. Found it very helpful, as others will too.
Mike