Copy a part of drawing, paste in another drawing keeping groups as they're

[dbhardwaj2785717889]

I am trying to copy and paste selected part of a drawing to another drawing keeping in mind that the groups should remain as they're in the first drawing. I am following the approach:
1. Select entities and cycle through them to collect the handles.
2. Collect all the groups in first drawing, and cycle through them and also inside of it the attached entities inside the group and get the handles.
My next tasks are:
3. Compare two handles and if matches, it means those particular groups attached to selected entities are selected.
4. Store selected group names, and entities inside arrays, copy them open a new drawing, paste them using insertion point, ensuring the pasted entities have the same groups as they were in the first drawing.
I tried following code (Upto step 2):

Option Explicit

'Declarations
Sub Group()

Dim acApp As AcadDocument
Set acApp = ThisDrawing.Application.ActiveDocument

'Creating Selection Set
Dim acSelSet As AcadSelectionSet
Set acSelSet = acApp.SelectionSets.Add("sset")
acSelSet.SelectOnScreen
Dim selection_count As Integer
selection_count = acSelSet.Count()

'Cycling through selected entities
Dim acEnt As AcadEntity
For Each acEnt In acSelSet
    acEnt.Handle
Next

'Cycling through groups, and getting handle for entitties attached to the group
Dim acGroup As AcadGroup
Dim acGroupEnt As AcadEntity
For Each acGroup In ThisDrawing.Groups
    Debug.Print ("Group Name: " & acGroup.Name)
    For Each acGroupEnt In acGroup
       Debug.Print ("    " & acGroupEnt.ObjectName & " ... " & acGroupEnt.Handle)
    Next
Next

'Creation of group object
'Dim acGroup As AcadGroup
'Dim acgroup As AcadGroups
'Dim group_count As Integer
'Set acgroup =
'group_count = acgroup.Count()
'Dim i As Integer
'Dim group_name As Variant
'For i = 0 To group_count
'    group_name = acgroup(i).Name
 '   acObj = acgroup.Item(i)
'Next i
'Dim group_count As Integer
'group_count = acGroup.Count()
'Dim group_name As String
'For Each acGroup In acSelSet
'    group_name = acGroup.Name()
'Next
'Dim group_count As Integer
'group_count = acGroup.Count
acSelSet.Delete
'acGroup.Delete
End Sub

If someone have solutions to my problem, please let me know. I am new to AutoCAD customization. Also, if someone have different approaches to solve the problems, it could be a great help. Thanks

[BlackBox]

Welcome to AUGI.

Unfortunately, that is how Autodesk designed groups to work. Some possible ways around this, are to:

Iterate the source group, creating a block, copy the block into the target drawing then iterate/explode the block, and recreate the group.

XREF the source drawing into the target drawing, BIND it, then ERASE everything that you do not need.

HTH

[dbhardwaj2785717889]

Hey BlackBox,
Thank you. Recreating the group in the new drawing will take more time. That is why i was asked to automate the process. I don't know how to do that. Because, this is my second project on autocad. Can you guide me through a code?

[BlackBox]

Well, we are talking about ActiveX in lieu of .NET - taking more time to do the same work is expected. Haha

If you're going to be developing code, this trio of DevBlog articles may be useful, and to demonstrate my comment on code performance/efficiency, this graphic from the 3rd article comes to mind... You see, I skipped VBA, jumping strait from AutoLISP/Visual LISP --> .NET API.




That said, adding a Group is pretty straight forward... Remember the ActiveX Object Model is your friend.

The Document Object's Groups Collection exposes an Add() Method - just scroll down to the 'Signature - All Other Supported Objects' section.

Once you've copied the source Group's contents into the target Drawing, and created a Group in the target Drawing, you can call the new Group Object's AppendItems() Method.

Cheers