block instances and properties

Hello All,

I am doing schematics just as drawings in SW and I created a bunch of
blocks that I use all the time, most of them I imported from AutoCAD.
I drop the pinout from a machine in and all the attributes are labeled
as follows.

I:1/09 where I = Input Card 1 = slot and 9 = bit.

When I drop one of these cards in I have been going through and
manually changing all of the attributes. This is usually just changing
the slot numbers on all the attributes. What I would like to do is
pull in a block set one attribute and all of the slot numbers will
change. Is this possible?

I was thinking linked properties would offer a way to do this. I can
not seem to set a property that is only useful to one instance of the
block.

Thank you,

 

You can use custom properties but only if you only need a single block
in the drawing. Another thing you can do is to use a macro that would
fill the attributes on insertion or from a custom property or a string
from the user

 

Is there a good place to learn about macro programming in solidworks?
I do quite a bit of excel and this seems a little different. I tried
recording a macro that I could select the block that I want to change
and play a macro. I can not seem to get it working.

Thank you,

 

Not all the functionality of the GUI is available in the API. A shame
it is; but that is how it is. It may be with blocks that you have to
figure it out as I think they are treated as annotations. Now as to
learning the SW API there is a lot of information available. Go into
the downloads section of the SW website and look through the two API
download sections. There are specific examples and what amount to
tutorials on how SW wants you to do things. I wouldn't call either
rigourously complete, but there is a lot there.

 

Here is what I would do. Since you are going to have alot of coppies
of a block in one drawing I would create the block with one attribute
that is invisible named something like BlockName-ID since it is
invisible you can use this ID to Identify which block is which for
later editing if needed.

I would have your program insert the block and fill it in from a form
or something.

Set MyBlock = dwgdoc.insertBlock(PathOnly + "\BlockName.SLDBLK", x, y,
0#, Bscale)
'note the x and y dims are in meters so you will have to convert your
units to meters
'Then You can edit the text of the block
MyBlock.SetAttributeValue "BlockName-ID", "BlockName-1"

'then you can retriev these values like this

msgbox = MyBlock.GetAttributeValue("BlockName-ID")

'You can also find your block later

Set thisView = dwgdoc.GetFirstView
Set blockInst = thisView.GetFirstBlockInstance
while blockInst.GetAttributeValue("BlockName-ID") <> "BlockName-1" and
not BlockInst is nothing
blockInst = BlockInst.GetNext
wend

If blockInst is nothing then
Msgbox "Didn't find an instance named BlockName-1"
exit sub
end if

'if your code gets here then you have your block instance found


Good luck

Corey