store a list of numbers in dwg

i would like to store a list of point numbers in a dwg. acad user
variables should not be used, because of conflicts with other programs
which already use these variables.
at the moment i think i have to make a block with no entities but an
invisible attribute, where i could store my list, could there be a
problem with the length of the attribute (up to 5000 characters should
be possible) and this attribute should be a list, because of using
member-function would make t easy to use in my prog) easier.
is there an easier way to do that? (eg store a selection set in the dwg?)

i am using acad2000
any help welcome

mfg
gert

 

Have you considered using an external ascii file (.txt, etc), using an excel
spreadsheet or a database? That way the file can be of any length. Reading
and changing would also be easier.

If you go the invisible attribute route, you could store the coordinates
with delimiting characters (example - a comma between x,y,z and a semi-colon
between sets of points). You could then use a number of programs posted here
(gettextlist is my example) to read the long character string, parse the
text to strings of x,y,z data. Then you parse the x,y,z text strings to
point values.

Another alternative to blocks with invisible attributes is to add extended
data to objects.

I don't know of any way to store a selection set other than to create groups
that can be processed. But someone else might have a trick or two.

 

I think you may want to take a look at ( vlax-ldata-put/get/list ). This function is made espacially for storing Lisp data in the drawing dictionary.

Acessing the data is faster than looking to an external file and the data always goes where the drawing goes. As well, it can't be modified by users unless they know they dictionary name AND the key name.

I've been using it for about a month now and I haven't encountered any data limits yet and I've stored the equivalent of about a 200k ASCII file in dictionary keys.

However, I don't know if you can store selection sets, but from what I've seen so far, I would guess that you can. I'm going to give that a try to see.

 

thanks for your help. i will have a look at the problem over weekend.

mfg
gert