need some Ideas on how to create a sign schedule

Discussion in 'AutoCAD' started by John Coon, Mar 7, 2004.

  1. John Coon

    John Coon Guest

    Group,

    Every project I do I must create a custom sign schedule for airport signage.
    Currently we use solid and a few blocks to generate the schedule, But this
    is
    very tedious work.

    I placed a jpeg in the AutoDesk-AutoCAD-customer-files called
    airportsigns.zip that is a sample of the type of sign schedule I must
    create.

    I guess I'm looking for some ideas on how to approach this task with vba. I
    thought about creating a group of TextBoxes that correspond with each panel
    of the sign and have the TextValue placed in the panel and a CheckBox for
    the hatch color to be placed behind the text value. Then I thought want
    about some type of text file or excel that could be read and have those
    values placed in the correct panels. I thought that I could use a template.

    Looking for any ideas you might have to automate this process.

    Thanks, Have a great day.

    John Coon
     
    John Coon, Mar 7, 2004
    #1
  2. Hi John,

    In planning this project ask your self these questions:

    Data entry: In which software will it be easiest to enter the data I need.
    At first pass it seems as thought Excel would be a winner here.
    It would be easy to enter the data as code on one sheet and query it to
    another or to AutoCAD for presentation
    How are my signs to be presented:
    In an AutoCAD drawing as AutoCAD objects ?
    In an AutoCAD drawing as bitmap objects ?
    In Excel ?
    How many different text messages exist ? It seems there is a relatively
    limit set.
    How many different locations for text exist in a sign ? It seems only 2 if
    you break most of the signs down to a single letter item..
    How many different background colours are needed ? Only 3 are shown, red,
    green and white
    How easy is it to create a set of columns in Excel to uniquely define a
    sign. For example, the first sign in the second row could be
    4 A G R LA R G E R G RA R G in thirteen columns with the 4 indicating 4
    blocks
    The second sign in the row would be
    4 A G R Nul R R Nul R R Nul R R where the entry for the letter wouldn't
    matter as both colours are the same.

    Within this system, the first row is different and the first sign could be
    coded with the 2 indicating 2 blocks.
    2 E G R 17-35 W G and the second as
    2 E G R 4Row R G


    Can I create an AutoCAD block with a solid background (for which I can
    easily change the colour) and with a single text attribute showing above it
    ?

    It looks from your file that many of the signs could be assembled from 4
    square blocks containing a single character inclusive of:

    Solid coloured letters. Their only appears to be a limited number of
    letters used. You could treat the letter as an attribute of the block or
    make individual blocks (or bitmaps)
    Letters with text outlines which appear in pairs
    Arrows in various directions
    Paired line combinations.

    If your table is to be presented in AutoCAD, I would upgrade to the 2005
    version of AutoCAD before doing any further work. I think you would find it
    s table facilities would save a lot of programming work.


    Hope this makes sense. I wrote as I thought.

    --


    Laurie Comerford
    CADApps
    www.cadapps.com.au
     
    Laurie Comerford, Mar 7, 2004
    #2
  3. John Coon

    John Coon Guest

    Hi Laurie,

    Thanks for your comments they are extremely helpful breaking down how to
    approach this task. At first I was thinking of creating a form to create a
    single sign at a time. I was pretty sure I could work those the operations
    to do that. Ultimately having the ability to read some form of data/text
    values and create the entire sign schedule would be the end solution. I
    guess if I'm going to work on this I should do as you suggest and work on
    something that looks and smells more like the end solution. I might take
    longer to create but will be more efficient and powerful.
    The signs will be AutoCAD objects. After creating the sign schedule I then
    place the same signs scaled down into the plan view signage plan. much like
    a roadway signage plan, just for airports.
    green and white
    actually black, yellow, white, red. (I changed then so you see yellow on a
    white background)
    limit set.
    I would need a letter for every taxiway name designation
    (A,B,C,E,F,D,H,I,J,K, )....and numbers for every runway number (1-36) and
    double rw end callouts
    17-35 plus and blocks that can't be drawn with text like the arrows and hold
    lines as show in the jpeg .
    Learning something new is good! I've written to excel but I've yet to read
    any data from excel. I'll look for some sample code.

    ? Would you use a template drawing with the panel square blocks already in
    place with maybe attributes or pre-set blocks with known coordinates or in
    your option would it be better to use a getpoint and work from there. There
    will be cases where I'll need to insert a schedule into a plan drawing.

    2005, yes I should get my copy this week. I'll look into the table styles.

    Thanks for Your Ideas, They really help.
    John Coon
     
    John Coon, Mar 7, 2004
    #3
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