topic Re: Autotext String Width in Libraries & objects

Autotext String Width

owen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:16:27 GMT

I am trying to get our Drawing Title to set its width based on its text content (<DRAWINGNAME> & <DRAWINGSCALE>) however I am having difficulty finding the correct way to extract the string width to position the text and line length. I have tried:

width=STW('<DRAWINGNAME>')*A_/1000
TEXT2 0,0,'<DRAWINGNAME>'
LINE2 0, 0, width, 0

Whilst this correctly displays the drawing name, the text anchor and line length use the width of the 13 characters in <DRAWINGNAME> and not the actual drawings name.

I (think) i understand why this doesn't work - the <DRAWINGNAME> autotext conversion to the correct drawing name is done after the script is run (ie. when displayed on the layout) whereas the STW is done within the script when <DRAWINGNAME> is still just those characters.

So is there a REQUEST function to get the name of the attached drawing name? I can't find anything in the AC10 GDL Reference Guide .. is there another more extensive list somewhere else?

Re: Autotext String Width

LiHigh — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:10:10 GMT

Owen,

AC_DrawingName is the answer which should be automatically listed in the parameter if we choose subtype Drawing Title. To make it works, we must first add this variable to the parameter manually.

There many more available Datas that shloud be included for subtype Drawing Title:
AC_DrawingNumber, AC_DrawingScale, AC_OriginalDrawingScale, AC_magnification, etc.

GS screw up again!

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:47:29 GMT

Excellent ... many thanks LiHigh! Works perfectly

Nice to see GS is sticking to their usual standards of documentation

I'm sorry but where the f-ing hell is this stuff documented?

I have run a text search on every single bit of documentation that comes with AC. Not only can i not find it anywhere in that, the fact that these variables are not created automatically when selecting the Drawing Title subtype but really are fundamental to their functionality shows they have well and truly fucked this up!

How many times do we have to say it ... If you add/change features you MUST include FULL documentation of ALL associated GDL commands and AC created variables as part of the documentation that ships with AC. We should not have to go any further than the Help Menu to find it!

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:14:25 GMT

You can find some documentation in the "basic library documentation". You should find the library on the GS server. There is included some html-doc. Most for the macros, but some of the blue optional object parameters are explained too.

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:57:10 GMT

thanks Frank

i've downloaded the Basic Library 10 kit from http://www.graphisoft.com/support/developer/downloads/ but cannot seem to find any of this documented there ... as a matter of fact i cannot find any reference anywhere in any of the HTML documentation to the Layouting environment in AC10 (both browsing through it and Spotlighting the entire Lib kit folder to check the contents of all the HTML files ...)

I appreciate the help given so far but could anyone post a link to the appropriate web page, or a page number to any of the PDF docs for AC. I'd really like to work out why I can't find this stuff

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:13:52 GMT

It is not much you can find there, because there are explained the macros. But if the use these optional (global) parameters they are listed with a few words: Have alook to Basic Library doc, which is available from developer/documentation site. Even that it is named there as "ArchiCAD 9" I think it is the version 10.

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:40:05 GMT

Especially have a look to this part:
http://www.graphisoft.com/ftp/techsupport/documentation/developer_docs/BasicLibraryDoc/10/LibDevGuide/Appendix_ACParams.html

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:03:59 GMT

OK thanks for the direction guys ... i can see there is a lot of stuff in here so i will have to look through it. However i have to say after quick look through the index there is nothing aparent that is AC10 layout environment related. Will see how i go.

This really shouldn't be so hard to find. I wish i had the time to work these things out for myself but GDL is only my side job here. And anyway, I shouldn't have to work it out for myself. I would definately put myself in the 'guys who haven't the time' category Matthew has refered to here

Matthew wrote:
Besides the lack of standards for structuring the parts (which is beginning to be addressed with the subtypes) there is no standard for ensuring that all these thing are properly documented and communicated to the end users. Guys like us can figure it out, but we really shouldn't have to, and the guys who haven't the time or inclination to figure it out should have a place to look this stuff up.

Re: Autotext String Width

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:03:58 GMT

LiHigh wrote:
AC_DrawingName is the answer which should be automatically listed in the parameter if we choose subtype Drawing Title. To make it works, we must first add this variable to the parameter manually.

There many more available Datas that shloud be included for subtype Drawing Title:
AC_DrawingNumber, AC_DrawingScale, AC_OriginalDrawingScale, AC_magnification, etc.

LiHigh,

Thanks for tips.
Could you please explain what exactly you mean:- "To make it work, we must first add this variable to the parameter manually"?

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 06:38:44 GMT

You have to add a parameter named AC_DrawingName to the parameter list of the object. Otherwise parameter content is not available. GS has introduced with AC 8 a new way to get more information by optional (global) parameters, which have to be part of the parameter list.

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:55:04 GMT

@ LiHigh
Where do you have the names from you can use? They are not documented anywhere, isn't it?

Re: Autotext String Width

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:05:51 GMT

owen wrote:
Excellent ... many thanks LiHigh! Works perfectly

Owen,

Did you actually get this to work? I'm having no luck. Any advice or tricks you came across would be greatly appreciated. I think I've done exactly what's required but the line remains the same length no matter what the title of the drawing is. Here's the code:

titw=STW('<DRAWINGNAME>')*GLOB_SCALE/1000

hotspot2 -0.0085, 0
hotspot2 titw, 0
line2 -0.0085, 0, titw, 0

I think this is all fine and maybe the problem is somewhere else. Have I added the AC_DrawingName parameter correctly? See attached parameter list snapshot.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:46:02 GMT

Ray,

You need to add AC_DrawingName to your parameter list - this is one of those undocumented blue optional parameters LiHigh and Frank are refering to. Usually the blue optionals are in the GS library documentation HTML files on their website, but they seem to have forgotten to include any documentation on the new Drawing Title subtypes. If it is there i can't find it anyway so I too would be interested to know how LiHigh found them!

Anyway this new parameter will actually return the drawing name as a string to use in your script. The autotext <DRAWINGNAME> does not work like that .. as far as the script is concerned it is literally those characters, it is only after the script is run and the object displayed that AC recognises that combination of characters as an autotext function and converts them. This is why the line remains a constant length ... it is the length of the characters <DRAWINGNAME>.

Below is the script i've used for part of our title - this finds the width of the drawing name and sets the width of the drawing title lines to match.

fjmt_mrk_len1=STW(AC_DrawingName)*(A_/1000)
LINE2 fjmt_mrk_rad1*2,-fjmt_mrk_rad1,fjmt_mrk_len1+fjmt_mrk_rad1*2+fjmt_mrk_txtoffset1,-fjmt_mrk_rad1
CIRCLE2 fjmt_mrk_rad1,-fjmt_mrk_rad1,fjmt_mrk_rad1

I've also attached our object as it stands. Its still a work in progress - for example it sets the title width based on the drawing name only. In practice this should always be the longest string but when its finished it will determine what string (Drawing Name, Scale ..) is longest and use that length. Anyway maybe it will help you.

Parameter names are a bit long i know but we like to put fjmt at the front of ours as most of our objects are just tweaked when required and this helps distinguish them from other peoples code

HTH

Re: Autotext String Width

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:50:14 GMT

Thanks Owen,

Haven't got time to look at it at the moment, but this should help a lot. Looking in the code of a working object is usually the best way I find to work out how things are working. Before I found this thread I was opening up an old title block object "Section-detail Marker.GSM" (from an old Australian Essential Library from before ArchiCAD 8 - before layout books and autotext titles) to look at the code. And it had the line "(stw(Ttl_Txt)*(A_/1000)" to calculate the width of the string. I remembered using this object for our titles pre ArchiCAD 8 and it working perfectly for our needs. But getting this to work with Titles now in 10 and optional object parameters was the headache.

I've no idea why the OOTB library in 10 couldn't have had a title object that worked similarly to this old one. It's very basic but works perfectly for adding a title of typical working documentation standard for all drawing types: plans, elevations, sections and details. Nothing I see of the new titles provided works like this. And with version 8 & 9 it was easy to draw your own, drag and stretch as needed. Still not quite perfect but a darn sight better than what's available in 10 at the moment.

Just a bit of a vent of my frustration with titles!!!!

But thanks again Owen.

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:06:03 GMT

No problem. Oh btw it doesn't work with automatic drawing cross referencing AFAIK ... we haven't used that in the past due to spliting our docs into many layout books. It is something I hope to get around to trying out soon though

Re: Autotext String Width

LiHigh — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 06:36:26 GMT

F. wrote:
@ LiHigh
Where do you have the names from you can use? They are not documented anywhere, isn't it?

Documented somewhere? are u kidding me?

I did it the hard way. I studied GS title object codes. very time consuming..........

Re: Autotext String Width

Frank Beister — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 07:15:59 GMT

Documented somewhere? are u kidding me?

I did not really thought of.

I have found now a hard way to search for the implemented optional Parameters too. Can you compare it with your list, if I have missed some? You will find it in a few days on selfgdl.com

AC_OriginalDrawingScale
AC_Magnification
AC_DrawingScale
AC_SourceFilePath
AC_SourceFileName
AC_TitleFitMode
AC_ManualPosition
AC_DrawingGUID

Re: Autotext String Width

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:45:49 GMT

I've been working on older v9 projects lately, so haven't used it much yet but I wanted to say a big thanks to Owen for sharing that Title Object.

At last something that works properly!

An object like this really must be included in Graphisoft's standard library or the localised libraries. It is an everyday standard way of titling drawings.

I can't imagine how someone coming new to ArchiCAD would deal with this. When automatic titling, numbering and referencing is touted as a feature but in practice is almost totally unuseable, new users may wonder 'Was I conned?'.

Older users realise it's something (titles as objects) that came out too soon - before being thouroughly resolved - and will eventually get fixed.

Re: Autotext String Width

owen — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:37:24 GMT

Thanks for the support Ray. Its not finished yet though, i've got a few things that needed to be done and some more i wanted to do. I've just moved offices and am about to head off to South America for a month so it could be a while before i get back to it ... but i will post it again when i have done more.