Is it possible to extract area and length of a certain polyline in one field expression?

[jan.vanderborght]

Hi!

*First an introduction:
In our office we use a roomtag-block to identify all the individual rooms in a drawing.
This block contains room information in multiple attributes: roomname, roomnumber, ceiling heigth, area.

The area-attribute already contains a field that is linked to a polyline surrounding each individual room.

I modified acfields.fdc to customize the area-field expression.

<FormatType name="Area">
<Formats>
<!--added by me Jan Van der Borght-->
<Format>
<DisplayName>Square meters (VK)</DisplayName>
<FormatString>%lu2%pr2%ps[, m²]%ct8[1e-006]</FormatString>
</Format>
<!--end-->

*Now the questions:
At the moment we also have to add the length-attribute to our roomtag-block to calculate the perimeter of each room.

1. Is there a possibility to reuse the same ObjId (the same polyline, I used to calculate the area) in the field expression for length?
%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId 8796088038784>%).Area \f "%lu2%pr2%ps[, m²]%ct8[1e-006]">%
This way I don't have to manually add 2000 new length-attributes.

2. Or is it possible to combine 2 field expressions in one to automatically display the area and perimeter of a selected polyline in one field?
Something like this:
%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId 8796088038784>%).Area \f "%lu2%pr2%ps[, m²]%ct8[1e-006]">%;%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId 8796088038784>%).Length \f "%lu2%pr2%ps[, m]%ct8[0.001]">%
Do I have to use a formula or lsp to achieve this?

Big thanks in advance!
Jan

[arshiel88]

I'm not familiar with the acfields.fdc, I don't exactly get why you need to edit this.

About your question of combining fields, Yes. In fact you can insert a second field after the other. You can even insert a field inside a field.
Copy to clipboard the combined field expression then paste directly to a text contents and it will be automatically evaluated. (Is this the reason why you edit acfields.fdc?) The semi-colon you put between expression will become a literal semi-colon because there's no need to separate them with any character save for characters that will appear in the text.

[jan.vanderborght]

Hey arshiel88, thanks for your reply! You're right, the modified acfields.fdc wasn't usefull to mention here.

After some brainstorming I think I need to change the title of this thread: it should be 'Please help me writing LSP or VBA-code to fill in a field automatically'.
I'm looking for a way to fill in the perimeter of a room as attribute in the block RoomInformation [Lokaalgegevens in Dutch] when the area of this room has already been calculated by using a polyline .

Visually explained:

image001.png
1. Open the attribute editor.
2. Doubleclick on the field of the area [Ruwbouwppervlakte in Dutch]

image002.png
3. Select Length as Property (because we want to know the perimeter of the same polyline that has been used to calculate the area.)
4. Copy the expression from 'Field Expression'

image003.png
5. Paste this expression in the attribute editor as Value for the Perimeter-attribute [Omtrek in Dutch].
6. The result is the perimeter of the same polyline as the polyline that is used to calculate the area.

To avoid that we need to copy-paste this field expression >2000 times, I'm looking for some VBA or LSP-code to automatically fill in all the perimeter-attributes.
Is this possible?

[arshiel88]

I can't help you with the Lisp but here's to try for VBA.
Create a block with attributes;

1. for Area Tag: AREA
2. for Perimeter Tag: PERIMETER

Then run this macro

Sub PerimeterAreaBlock()

Dim strObjectID As String
Dim xBlock As AcadBlockReference
Dim objPolyline As AcadLWPolyline
Dim varAttribs As Variant

On Error Resume Next
ThisDrawing.Utility.GetEntity xBlock, pt1, "Select Block"
If Err Then Exit Sub
ThisDrawing.Utility.GetEntity objPolyline, pt1, "Select polyline"
If Err Then Exit Sub

strObjectID = ThisDrawing.Utility.GetObjectIdString(objPolyline, False)
AreaFieldStr = "%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId " & strObjectID & ">%).Area \f ""%lu2%pr2%ps[, m²]%ct8[1e-006]"">%"
LengthFieldStr = "%<\AcObjProp.16.2 Object(%<\_ObjId " & strObjectID & ">%).Length \f ""%lu2%pr2%ps[, m]%ct8[0.001]"">%"

varAttribs = xBlock.GetAttributes

For i = 0 To UBound(varAttribs)
    Select Case varAttribs(i).TagString
        Case "PERIMETER"
            varAttribs(i).TextString = LengthFieldStr
        Case "AREA"
            varAttribs(i).TextString = AreaFieldStr
    End Select
Next

ThisDrawing.Regen acActiveViewport

End Sub

I think this is better than to extract (but its also possible) the ObjectID from the field expression of the area attribute. The defining polyline is still there right? Or else the field wont work. What do you think?

[jan.vanderborght]

Thanks for the fast reply!
I'll try to implement your code the next week, I'll keep you up-to-date!

[jan.vanderborght]

do I need to install the the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Module first for this to work?
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=9240618

[arshiel88]

Yes. Its not included in the installation in the later releases because their trying to abolish it.