Topic Title

[Mark F. Madura]

For those of you who are interested, we have posted the source code for a macro that allows you to change colors within an unexploded symbol.

You can download the source files from the DDN Open Source Code Exchange page at...

http://www.datacad.com/ddn/source_discl.htm

You can download the compiled macro to try here...

http://www.datacad.com/ddn/downloads/psymcolors.zip

Thank You,

MFM

Works good, thanks guys! Old symbols files here we come! These types of new little macros will be awsome!

Hello,

I just tried it here in WinXP Pro x64 and it was a no-go...I'll reboot to 32bit and see if it works on the same hardware.

[Edit: I still not getting it to work; this is all I get in either version of Windows:
]

Hello Mark,

This is a great initiative. There is a lot of guys who will love it.

May be it must be improved, because I get some odd behaviors, as much as I could find at the first sight (I have more features would love to see it working):

1) The macro isn't recognizing the 'LyrSearch' feature. You can't select a symbol while it is in other layer, out of the active.
Wish feature: LyrSrch ability.

2) If you change color of one symbol on a drawing, every new instance of that symbol, added to that same drawing, will keep this 'new' color. On a new file, that symbol will keep the original color.
Wish feature: Ability to change in one symbol and not reflecting this change in the others.

3) The symbol changed by this macro apparently don't follow color settings on o2c Viewer renderings.
Wish feature: It should do it, following current .DMF

Hoping to help.

Anyway Thank You for the nice efforts.
Miguel

The first thing that threw me off was that the "Select Symbol" statement is displayed on the wrong line. It shows on the "Attention" line, but should show on the "Message" line.

I also noticed that macros with the DMX extention do not load a second time when the symbol name is listed on "File name:" line. The DMX extension must be added or the macro reselected from the pop-up list. DCX macros load correctly a second time by just selecting open or pressing enter.

I agree with Miguel that the color change should have the option of being drawing wide or per instance. With the per instance option it should remember the changes and ask you to select which instances you would like to change.

Once you change the colors it forgets what the original colors where. If you select it a second time it shows the revised color as the original. It should still show the original color and the second box show what it has been changed to.

Also there should be an option to reset it back to its original settings.

It would also be cool if this could include remapping linetypes.

Jon.

I think this is a great macro!

So far I have used it several times. I agree that there needs to be a way to insert the orignal symbol again with the orignal colors. Could a way be added to save the revised symbol within the specific drawing only with a new name?

2> In your current drawing all instances of symbols should update. A symbol in one drawing does not know about instances of same symbol in another drawings. You will have to write the symbol to disk (Select the checkbox for updating symbol on disk) and reload the symbol in another drawing.

3> Symbol could have material info stored in symbol layers and may not be getting via the DMF file.

There are lots of other factors that could be changed for entities inside symbol and thus we have made this is an open source project so someone can take it to next level.

Hello,

Well, I figured out what I was missing, and I don't think there is a prompt for this; and that is reselecting the symbol after placing it in the drawing. It does work.

My suggestions concern repeating the same action for multiple symbols: you have to click on the same color changes for each successive symbol. So it would be nicer to have the "color map" be saved; and/or have the macro just work on all the symbols in a directory; and/or have it work by Area, etc., would all be very useful enhancements.

Also, when I save the changes to disk, the symbol in the SB doesn't update, on this machine anyway.

Also, when I save the changes to disk, the symbol in the SB doesn't update, on this machine anyway.

I noticed that to and found if you change the folder you are viewing in the SB and change back it will reflect the change

Or Ctrl+T twice to close and re-open the symbol browser will update a little faster, but would be nice if when you close the change color dialog box it would scan the symbol browser for the same symbol, and refresh it if it's there.