Access Point Database with ALisp

[RDI]

We use LDD (Acad 2k4) to import cogo points (among other things of course). I'd like to know if it's possible to access the point database from AutoLisp. If not can I use VBA to do it? One of the things I'd like to do is to get the coords of specified points.

TIA

 

[Jeff Mishler]

Here's a little snip to get you started. This will list the N/E of individually input point numbers. You can expand from this into what you want. This was written for ALD3, but I think it will still work with ALD2004.

HTH,
Jeff

(defun aecPt_coords (/ ACADOBJ AECAPP AECPROJ POINT POINTS PT#) (setq acadobj (vlax-get-acad-object) aecapp (vla-getinterfaceobject acadobj "Aecc.Application") aecproj (vlax-get aecapp "ActiveProject") ) (setq points (vlax-get aecproj "CogoPoints") ) (while (setq pt# (getint "\nPoint # to extract N/E's: ")) (setq point (vla-item points (itoa pt#))) (princ (strcat "\nNorthing: " (rtos (vlax-get point "Northing")) "\tEasting: " (rtos (vlax-get point "Easting")))) ) (princ)
)

 

[Laurie Comerford]

Hi,

This is very straightforward in either VBA or lisp.

There is sample code for VBA supplied with the software and maybe for Lisp, but I've never looked.

Bear in mind that the APIs supplied by Autodesk are very, very slow and if you want to do anything meaningful like processing more than 10 points at a time, it would probably pay you to use ADO ActiveX in VBA. DAO also works very well, but programming gurus keep saying Microsoft is abandoning it.
..

 

[John Uhden]

You could look at an example posted on Cadlantic'c Freebies page.

 

[RDI]

Jeff, Laurie and John:

Thanks to all of you for the assist. I'll try this info on Monday.

 

[RDI]

I tried Jeff and John's suggestions. I appreciate the time that everyone took to reply. But I have a couple of concerns. The code that Jeff provided is running VERY slow (I asked for the coords for ONE point and it took like 15-20 seconds. And I'm on a Dual Pentium P4 with 1 GB of ram and more than 50GB free HD space--so I doubt it's the speed of the PC. In addition to the speed, it seems to be returning WRONG information. I asked for the coords for point #563. It returned Northing: 518103.61
Easting: 1990070.63 Elevation: 59.41. However If I ID on the node in my drawing OR use "List Points" from the menu, this point has the coords of X =
1990083.89 Y = 518057.73 Z = 59.67 (LIST Points DOES return the same coords).

When I run the code from John's web site, it returns (0.0 0.0 0.0) for the same point number--although it is VERY fast. The code from John's page is as follows:
;downloaded from the "Freebies" second of www.cadlantic.com (defun EastNorthToXY (p / AeccApp AeccDocs AeccDoc AeccUtil) (if (not *acad*)(setq *acad* (vlax-get-acad-object))) (if (and (setq AeccApp (vl-catch-all-apply 'vla-getinterfaceobject (list
*acad* "aecc.application")))
(not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccApp))
(setq AeccDocs (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-get (list AeccApp "Documents"))) (not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccDocs)) (setq AeccDoc (vla-item AeccDocs 0)) (setq AeccUtil (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-get (list AeccDoc "Utility"))) (not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccUtil)) (vlax-method-applicable-p AeccUtil "EastNorthToXy") ) (vlax-invoke AeccUtil "EastNorthToXy" p) )
)

 

[RDI]

PS
I'll probably EVENTUALLY get around to trying this in VBA--but I haven't tried anything in VBA yet and I was hoping this would be a little "quickie" (somethign that I don't have to learn a new language to be able to make it happen). I HAVE used VB.Net (but not previous versions) so VB is not TOTALLY foreign to me--but still.

 

[John Uhden]

The EastNorthToXY function converts a coordinate list in the form of '(E N [Z]), not a point number. Anyway, my apologies. The ActiveX method doesn't like integers in the coordinates. This oughta do it... (defun EastNorthToXY (p / AeccApp AeccDocs AeccDoc AeccUtil) (if (not *acad*)(setq *acad* (vlax-get-acad-object))) (if (and (setq p (mapcar 'float p)) (setq AeccApp (vl-catch-all-apply 'vla-getinterfaceobject (list *acad* "aecc.application"))) (not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccApp)) (setq AeccDocs (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-get (list AeccApp "Documents"))) (not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccDocs)) (setq AeccDoc (vla-item AeccDocs 0)) (setq AeccUtil (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-get (list AeccDoc "Utility"))) (not (vl-catch-all-error-p AeccUtil)) (vlax-method-applicable-p AeccUtil "EastNorthToXy") ) (vlax-invoke AeccUtil "EastNorthToXy" p) )
)