Open all drawings read only

[aturgeon]

Alright, so I have this program I am using to extract information from a batch of AutoCAD drawings all at once. Sometimes people have the drawings open, other times they don't. when I generate the script, it verifies all the drawings as either being open at the time or closed at the time of the script creation. The script runs through all the drawings as long as those drawings that were open/closed when the script was created remain as so. However, if someone opens a drawing/closes a drawing during the process and the script comes to that drawing during that change, it will halt. Failure.

My question is, would there be a command line switch, autoLISP, or some other modification I could make so that ALL DRAWINGS would be opened read-only? This way, regardless if they are open or not, it opens it read-only. I don't need to save changes to the drawings but I want to be able to open every drawing via commandline (for the script) without having any dialog boxes (so it doesn't halt). Any ideas? Thanks.

[rkmcswain]

The open method supports read-only.

(vl-load-com)
(if (zerop (getvar "SDI"))
  (vlax-invoke-method
    (vla-get-documents (vlax-get-acad-object))
    'Open
    "C:\\mydrawing.dwg"
    :vlax-true
  )
)

[aturgeon]

So there is no way to set up an opening method without defining the specific drawing to be opened within the open command? No way to redfine the _OPEN command to open as read-only regardless if it is open or not?

[aturgeon]

What about WRITESTAT? (if (= (getvar "WRITESTAT") 1) (command "_OPEN" "Y")?

[rkmcswain]

No way to redfine the _OPEN command to open as read-only regardless if it is open or not?

Like this?

(vl-load-com)
(command "._undefine" "open")
(defun C:open ()
  (setq fn (getfiled "Select Drawing" "" "dwg" 0))
  (if (zerop (getvar "SDI"))
    (vlax-invoke-method
      (vla-get-documents (vlax-get-acad-object))
      'Open
      fn
      :vlax-true
    )
  )
)

[aturgeon]

Almost. Is there a way to suppress the dialog?

[aturgeon]

Could you just use (getstring "") somewhere in the lisp to make it take on the value of the next input?

[rkmcswain]

Almost. Is there a way to suppress the dialog?

That is what the first bit of code did...
I'm confused now...

[aturgeon]

well i liked redefining the open command to always open read-only, but then I wanted to have it prompt for the next line (the drawing path and filename) to open that drawing read only. I modified it a bit to say:

(vl-load-com)
(if (zerop (getvar "SDI"))
  (vlax-invoke-method
    (vla-get-documents (vlax-get-acad-object))
    'Open
    (getstring "")
    :vlax-true
  )
)

That hangs up because the automatically generated list produces file names in quotes.

then I tried

(vl-load-com)
(command "._undefine" "open")
(defun C:open ()
  (if (zerop (getvar "SDI"))
    (vlax-invoke-method
      (vla-get-documents (vlax-get-acad-object))
      'Open
      (getstring "")
      :vlax-true
    )
  )
)

which works kinda, but then it returns to the host drawing (Drawing1) to run the script instead of the drawing it opened read-only...

I'm confused as well... this batch script generator (Hurricane) doesn't seem to like my methods of trying to open things read-only. I can load the lisp into AutoCAD to redefine the OPEN command, but then it doesnt accept the filename in quotes.

Maybe it can't be done this way and I am best off just putting the program on a user that has read-only access to drawings and then running the program from there. That way the script will open all the drawings up read-only as well as use the batch script generator correctly unless you can think of a way to modify the lisp. Thanks for all your effort though.

[rkmcswain]

Not sure why you are inserting the (getstring) in there.
Get your filenames first, then feed them to the original function.

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