Opening Drawings as Read-Only

Is there any easy way to open drawings as read-only with Lisp? I've attempted to go this route:

(setq r (open fl3 "a"))
(command "._open" fl3 "y")
(close r)

but it seems like my files don't always successfully close, and sometimes I end up with .dwg files at 0 kb. This is not my whole routine, but I'll post that if I need to. I was just wondering if maybe there was a better way to do this? I'm far from being an expert here, I'm self taught and still learning, so any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Marti

 

The open function in lisp has nothing to do with the Acad open command.

The lisp function "opens a file for access by the AutoLISP I/O functions" as
described in help. This is used for reading or writing text files. The
available I/O functions are read-char, read-line, write-char, and
write-line.

You can open a drawing in lisp via (command "open" <drawingname>) but unless
you have SDI set to 1, your lisp will terminate at the open command. If you
want to do stuff in multiple files which involves opening and closing them,
a script is probably what you need. If you'll describe what you're trying to
do, someone can probably help.

 

Here's a routine which Jimmy Bergmark posted in September:

(defun openRO (fna)
(vla-activate (vla-open (vla-get-documents (vlax-get-acad-object)) fna
:VLAX-TRUE))
)

Apparently you need the full pathname to the drawing file for this to work

 

What I am trying to do is create a routine that will read drawing names from a text file one by one, open each drawing and plot it. I think I have a pretty good handle on the rest of it, I'd just like all of the drawings to be opened read-only, as different people have different access to our network drives (some have write access and some will open all drawings as read-only anyway).

No problem getting all the full path names, and my routine deals with SDI mode. Sorry to be such a beginner, but how would I use the code that you posted? Does that go within my routine or does it need to be separate? And do I use it as is or do I need to change any of it to work with what I have?

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it! =)

Marti

 

That's called batch plotting. It's a very common task that nearly all
offices need to perform, and there are many, many ways to do it without
writing a program for the purpose.

Acad has a built-in batch plot utility. You can also do it with the Publish
command. Look them up in help.

When you want to do things to multiple drawing, the natural way is to use a
script, not a lisp function. Scripts are covered in help.

If you have the 2000/2000i Migration Assistant, it included the ScriptPro
utility which makes it easy to generate scripts for multiple drawings. I use
an old shareware script generator which does about the same thing. There's
no need for you to create a list of drawings in a text file, that's what the
scripting utilities do for you.

If there is a lisp function you want to run in multiple drawings, you should
run it from a script. The script will be of the form

open <drawing1>
(load "mylisp")
(c:mylisp)
qsave
open <drawing2>
(load "mylisp")
(c:mylisp)
qsave
....
etc.

 

Great. =)

Thanks for the tips and all your time, Tom.