ATTIN with Annotative Blocks

[wesleylau]

Hi, been a long time reader of AUGI but this is my first post. I'm using the express tool ATTIN/ATTOUT, but I'm running into a problem when it operates on my annotative blocks. When it replaces the attribute in an annotative block, it scales the text by the current scale, so if i'm working at 1/4" = 1'-0", my attribute text will scale by 48 each time I use ATTIN.

The command works if I add the scale to 1'-0" = 1'-0" and use the command when I'm in that scale, but that's a problem because I don't want multiple scales on my blocks in the same drawing. I've tried looking at the LISP code, but don't know what's causing that behavior. Any help would be appreciated!

[irneb]

The issue is the AttIn was created long before anno scales. And whenever you use entmod on an annotative text there's an issue with the height setting. EntGet returns the model height (i.e. a scale of 1" = 1' would give a 12x height in model), but entmod sees that same height as the paper height.

You've got 3 options to correct this (in order of difficulty):

1. Use vla (ActiveX) to modify the text instead of entmod
2. Omit the dxf code 40 for the text height when sending to entmod
3. Calculate the correct height by checking the scale's factor and converting it down to paper height when performing the entget

[wesleylau]

Thanks for the help irneb. I don't know much ActiveX so I'd probably need too much help with that one. Right now I'm trying option number 2. The thing is, I don't see entmod at all in the attout.lsp routine. As far as I can tell, the actual attribute is edited by the line (acet-undo-end). Is this some function that is called within attout? And if so, where is it located?

[irneb]

Att out doesn't do the entmod, it's in the attin function. AttOut simply gets the values and writes them to file. AttIn reads the file then entmods the attributes. That seems to use the acet-insert-attrib-set function which is inside the acetutil4.fas file. So it seems one should actually thus rewrite the entire attin - a fas file is not editable.

[wesleylau]

Dang. So you're saying that you can't do the change without rewriting the entire function?

[irneb]

Yep. Of course you could write something which would add 1:1 into all annotative blocks, set 1:1 current,, then run c:attin, then set the previous scale current and remove 1:1 from those blocks.

[wesleylau]

Yes, that sounds like a great option. Thanks again!