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Playing With Symbols Attributes To Create Dynamic Symbols

PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 4:45 pm
by joshhuggins
I was playing a bit with the idea of using Symbol Attributes to create Dynamic Symbols (à la Autocad's Dynamic Blocks). Symbols that when inserted would prompt you to pick a version of that symbol to be inserted via a symbol attribute drop down. I created this Smart Electrical Switch symbol using a set of attributes that "draw" lines using text. It was just something to test around the concept but it works pretty good once built. Thought I'd share it in case someone might want to use the idea to build some similar symbols. It's a total bastard hodgepodge but if you had a real need for something similar it might be great once built. It's not practical for a series of symbols as you would probably need to have a database for each version of the symbol. Annnd you might get strange looks from people you export the file to DWG for. :lol: Maybe with the work being done for the Paperspace/MSP maybe true Dynamic Symbol/Block/off layer support could be added in the future?

In this sample the blue line extends by using using a symbol attribute to "draw" the letter i which looks just like a straight line using the ARCWY2GP.SHX font . So you could load different sets of symbol attributes that draw the letter 'i', to draw specific parts of a symbol depending on which version is selected in the drop down. Rotating the symbol attribute as needed to allows you to draw horizontal elements, permitted Fix Text is turned off for the symbol.

Zip file contents: Extract the Electrical Switches.txt database file to your Datacad Database folder and the 2 DSF symbols somewhere you can browse to with the Symbol Browser. My original database path was C:\Datacad\Databases\ so Datacad will probably ask you if you want to update the Database path.
Smart Switch.PNG