Developed myself into a corner.

Oh no,

Ummm, as the title suggests, I seem to have developed myself into a corner.

The situation:

I have some code that retrieve a JPEG from a WebService (MapSERVER
based). The idea was to capture the current screen resolution in
AutoCAD and grab the approriate resolution of imagery from MapSERVER and
display it inside of AutoCAD simply by being zoomed into the approriate
level. This all works just peachy until we try to pull another image in
from the same service. It seems that IE like to use the same name for
the new file (jpeg image) as it did for the previous when it comes from
a CGI on the server.

The Problem:

The newly downloaded file (jpeg) has the same name and cache (folder)
location locally as the first one did.

The Question:

How can the IMAGE insertion name be changed/modified (similar to a BLOCK
rename) upon insertion into the DWG if at all. I run a similar
procedure for DWG tiles from the server where I rename the block upon
insertion. There doesn't seem to be a way of redefining the image name
other than renaming the source file before using IMAGEATTACH on it.

A couple of possible solutions:

I though about, might be in how the Web Service send the image down,
if I can somehow force the imageName on the file sent and have IE read
it faithfully, that woulddo the trick. Another option might be to
generate the image on the server and place it in a TMP location for
forwarding by the Server CGI, IE seems to like this approach as it
renames the local cached object accordingly.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Thanks

bobb

 

what you did sounds great, did you ever look into OLE objects? it may not be
preferable but that way you could embed the image in the drawing.

 

I don't know about the literal meaning of "upon insertion." but just like an
xref, you can change the both the name and path of an image reference (Raster
object) using the Name and ImageFile properties via ActiveX

 

Thus:
(setq ent(car (entsel)))
<Entity name: 7ef80ef8>
(vla-put-name (vlax-ename->vla-object ent) "NewName")

However, I think it will take a pathname change as well.

I suspect the easy solution (hopefully for you - not for me) would be to put
the images on the drive with unique names in the first place.

Just my 2 cents.

Mike Weaver

 

That would all be new to me, ActiveX. Not sure if I'm ready for
(really) new stuff yet.

the Upon insertion was meant to relate to the start up of the
IMAGEATTACH command, while in the command, how would one change the name
of the source object (IMAGE) for placement inside of AutoCAD. THe name
is the same from the current Window File pointer, even though the images
change.

They are dynamically generated on the server via a CGI call.

bobb

 

Well that's another new one. And you say this works for any insertion
even and IMAGE object?

I had though about copying the file to a new name locally, but that
didn't seem very clean, and IE cleans it's own cache out, so it would be
preferable to leaqve the files there.

That's the rub here. The images are being generated on the fly from a
web based image server, these (aerial) photo's are being called by IE
via a WEB CGI call. IE like to store the result locally by the same
name, despite the image data changing, it understands the CGI call as a
file name, which is the same everytime. in other words, everything after
the CGI, all the parameters for generating the seperate images, are
ignored by IE and it uses the same name/location locally to store the
new download, which conflicts with any other previously downloaded and
IMAGEATTACHED raster file in AutoCAD.

I'm still pondering this if anyone has any ideas.

TIA

bobb

 

have you thought about making an OLE object?
they are created with the INSERTOBJ command but can also be created with
basic autolisp.
to create an OLE object would not require the source image, it embeds the
data into the drawing.
of course your drawing files would be larger. as i said, it may not be
preferable.