AutoFilling title Blocks

I often create many drawing sheets for each mold I design. I would
like to be able to fill in one title block and click a button to fill
in the rest of the title blocks automatically. In autocad I have a
lisp routine that updates the same attributes in each title block. I
thought maybe someone had made an API program that did something
similiar.

Thanks in advance
Chris

 

Use custom properties in the model and link them to the fields in the
border title block. Look this up in help.

Dave H

 

....and you propably want something like SWit to save the properties to
the model: www.markkulehtola.net/swit.html

 

Are you using the custom properties from your model file to fill the title
block automatically?

 

The problem with using custom properties is that I often will have
more than one component for the mold on the same sheet. Also, I would
have to fill in all of the same info for each component of the mold.
I would rather just fill in one title block then run a macro or
something to fill in the rest of the title blocks. Does anyone know
if it is possible to access attributes in the API?

Thanks
Chris

 

Yes it is possible to set and read attributes in API. Here is an example.
This sets fields on my form to the values in the block passed to the
function.

Public Sub GetCurrentAttributes(BlockName As SldWorks.BlockInstance)

RevisionForm.REV1.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("TOP LETTER")
RevisionForm.REV2.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("MID LETTER")
RevisionForm.REV3.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("BOT LETTER")
RevisionForm.Description1.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("TOP
DESC")
RevisionForm.Description2.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("MID
DESC")
RevisionForm.Description3.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("BOT
DESC")
RevisionForm.Date1.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("TOP DATE")
RevisionForm.Date2.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("MID DATE")
RevisionForm.Date3.Value = BlockName.GetAttributeValue("BOT DATE")
RevisionForm.DateNew.Value = Month(Now) & "-" & Day(Now) &
VBA.Chr(vbKeyReturn) & VBA.Right(Year(Now), 2)
'REVISIONFORM.RevNew.Value =

End Sub



and this one sets them to the new values in the form

Public Sub UpdateBlock(BlockName As SldWorks.BlockInstance)

BlockName.SetAttributeValue "TOP DESC", RevisionForm.Description1.Text
BlockName.SetAttributeValue "TOP DATE", RevisionForm.Date1.Text
BlockName.SetAttributeValue "MID DESC", RevisionForm.Description2.Text
BlockName.SetAttributeValue "MID DATE", RevisionForm.Date2.Text
BlockName.SetAttributeValue "BOT DESC", RevisionForm.Description3.Text
BlockName.SetAttributeValue "BOT DATE", RevisionForm.Date3.Text

End Sub

Of course you will first have to attach to SW the Document and the correct
instance of the block (which would have to have the proper field names
setup.)

You could also save out your sheet format and apply it to each sheet the
only problem is that if there are changes to individual sheets they will be
hard to manage.

Corey