need some Ideas on how to create a sign schedule

Group,

Every project I do I must create a custom sign schedule for airport signage.
Currently we use solid and a few blocks to generate the schedule, But this
is
very tedious work.

I placed a jpeg in the AutoDesk-AutoCAD-customer-files called
airportsigns.zip that is a sample of the type of sign schedule I must
create.

I guess I'm looking for some ideas on how to approach this task with vba. I
thought about creating a group of TextBoxes that correspond with each panel
of the sign and have the TextValue placed in the panel and a CheckBox for
the hatch color to be placed behind the text value. Then I thought want
about some type of text file or excel that could be read and have those
values placed in the correct panels. I thought that I could use a template.

Looking for any ideas you might have to automate this process.

Thanks, Have a great day.

John Coon

 

Hi John,

In planning this project ask your self these questions:

Data entry: In which software will it be easiest to enter the data I need.
At first pass it seems as thought Excel would be a winner here.
It would be easy to enter the data as code on one sheet and query it to
another or to AutoCAD for presentation
How are my signs to be presented:
In an AutoCAD drawing as AutoCAD objects ?
In an AutoCAD drawing as bitmap objects ?
In Excel ?
How many different text messages exist ? It seems there is a relatively
limit set.
How many different locations for text exist in a sign ? It seems only 2 if
you break most of the signs down to a single letter item..
How many different background colours are needed ? Only 3 are shown, red,
green and white
How easy is it to create a set of columns in Excel to uniquely define a
sign. For example, the first sign in the second row could be
4 A G R LA R G E R G RA R G in thirteen columns with the 4 indicating 4
blocks
The second sign in the row would be
4 A G R Nul R R Nul R R Nul R R where the entry for the letter wouldn't
matter as both colours are the same.

Within this system, the first row is different and the first sign could be
coded with the 2 indicating 2 blocks.
2 E G R 17-35 W G and the second as
2 E G R 4Row R G


Can I create an AutoCAD block with a solid background (for which I can
easily change the colour) and with a single text attribute showing above it
?

It looks from your file that many of the signs could be assembled from 4
square blocks containing a single character inclusive of:

Solid coloured letters. Their only appears to be a limited number of
letters used. You could treat the letter as an attribute of the block or
make individual blocks (or bitmaps)
Letters with text outlines which appear in pairs
Arrows in various directions
Paired line combinations.

If your table is to be presented in AutoCAD, I would upgrade to the 2005
version of AutoCAD before doing any further work. I think you would find it
s table facilities would save a lot of programming work.


Hope this makes sense. I wrote as I thought.

--


Laurie Comerford
CADApps
www.cadapps.com.au

 

Hi Laurie,

Thanks for your comments they are extremely helpful breaking down how to
approach this task. At first I was thinking of creating a form to create a
single sign at a time. I was pretty sure I could work those the operations
to do that. Ultimately having the ability to read some form of data/text
values and create the entire sign schedule would be the end solution. I
guess if I'm going to work on this I should do as you suggest and work on
something that looks and smells more like the end solution. I might take
longer to create but will be more efficient and powerful.

The signs will be AutoCAD objects. After creating the sign schedule I then
place the same signs scaled down into the plan view signage plan. much like
a roadway signage plan, just for airports.

green and white
actually black, yellow, white, red. (I changed then so you see yellow on a
white background)

limit set.
I would need a letter for every taxiway name designation
(A,B,C,E,F,D,H,I,J,K, )....and numbers for every runway number (1-36) and
double rw end callouts
17-35 plus and blocks that can't be drawn with text like the arrows and hold
lines as show in the jpeg .

Learning something new is good! I've written to excel but I've yet to read
any data from excel. I'll look for some sample code.

? Would you use a template drawing with the panel square blocks already in
place with maybe attributes or pre-set blocks with known coordinates or in
your option would it be better to use a getpoint and work from there. There
will be cases where I'll need to insert a schedule into a plan drawing.

2005, yes I should get my copy this week. I'll look into the table styles.

Thanks for Your Ideas, They really help.
John Coon