topic Re: Stretchy text boxes... in Libraries & objects

Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 04:00:15 GMT

Hi guys.... I'm having a confusing time with some GDL....

If I just get some 2D text and create an object it exports to a DWG just fine.... but if I make the box stretchy it looks fine in AC and PM but the moment I export to DWG, the result looks like pooh...

Here is the script I use for my stretchy text box...

DEFINE STYLE{2} "AC_STYLE_1" "Stylus BT", 0.2, 0

PARAGRAPH "AC_PRG_1" 1, 0, 0, 0, 1
PEN 3
SET STYLE "AC_STYLE_1"

"THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG, THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.."

ENDPARAGRAPH
TEXTBLOCK "AC_TEXTBLOCK_1" a, 7, 0, 1, 1, 0,
"AC_PRG_1"
RICHTEXT2 0, 0, "AC_TEXTBLOCK_1"

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:48:06 GMT

bump...

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

TomWaltz — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:56:31 GMT

Nefarious wrote:
bump...

huh?

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:44:01 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Nefarious wrote:
bump...
huh?

Any ideas tom?

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:02:01 GMT

Someone must have an idea...

Currently I cannot print my documents... please help

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Frank Beister — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:58:46 GMT

I guess it's more a Problem of the settings of the DWG filter.

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

TomWaltz — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:57:42 GMT

Nefarious wrote:
Someone must have an idea...

Currently I cannot print my documents... please help

Without knowing what the problem actually is other than "it looks bad", we cannot say. Maybe a screenshot would help.

How does this conversion affect you being able to print? Are you printing Archicad drawings in AutoCAD for some reason?

Sometimes we need a little more info to be able to answer something.

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:00:47 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Nefarious wrote:
Someone must have an idea...

Currently I cannot print my documents... please help
Without knowing what the problem actually is other than "it looks bad", we cannot say. Maybe a screenshot would help.

How does this conversion affect you being able to print? Are you printing Archicad drawings in AutoCAD for some reason?

Sometimes we need a little more info to be able to answer something.

When I say it looks bad.... The formatting of the text in the box is completely different, the width seems to be affected, the boxes become less wide and much taller... so the documentation ends up overlapping the plan in weird areas etc...

When I say "I cannot print" I guess I was overstating... I should have said I cannot export to DWG correctly...

I have tried every relevant switch and toggle in the translator but have not found anything that affects these text boxes...

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

TomWaltz — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:21:30 GMT

Nefarious wrote:
When I say it looks bad.... The formatting of the text in the box is completely different, the width seems to be affected, the boxes become less wide and much taller... so the documentation ends up overlapping the plan in weird areas etc...

When I say "I cannot print" I guess I was overstating... I should have said I cannot export to DWG correctly...

I have tried every relevant switch and toggle in the translator but have not found anything that affects these text boxes...

My suspicion is that there is something in the stretched text box that either the translator or AutoCAD cannot process correctly and is making a narrower text box than you expect.

I've avoided the RICHTEXT stuff inside GDL like the plague, so I really cannot say for sure.

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:57:21 GMT

How would I go about making the same object without using rich text?

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Frank Beister — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 23:21:06 GMT

I would isolate the RICHTEXT passage into a new object. Place this in a plain plan. Start from the scratch new or reduce the richtext specialities of your code an export to DWG after each change to see, what does not work. There are a lot of possibilities to stretch and transform the text to fit it in your box. would be astonished, if this could be exported to DWG.
Try first some most common fonts and sizes. And please post, what makes the trouble. 😉
If you don't want to use RICHTEXT2, you will need to do it with (lots of) TEXT2. Thats very hard, because you can't mix styles inside a text or get automatical wraped text.

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:35:24 GMT

Ive spent about 5 hours trying to make a stretchy text box using TEXT2 but simply cannot do it ...

Are there any GS staff here that can shed some light on this situation?

Re: Stretchy text boxes...

Barry Kelly — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 07:05:37 GMT

Nefarious wrote:
Ive spent about 5 hours trying to make a stretchy text box using TEXT2 but simply cannot do it ...

Are there any GS staff here that can shed some light on this situation?

I'm not familiar with richtext as I still use V81.

The stretchy box shouldn't be a problem but stretchy text is.
You will need the object to read through your text breaking it down into individual words using "STRSTR" to find the position of the spaces.
"SUBSTR" can be used to isolate just that word and "STW" used to find the length of that word.
This can then be cummulative for each subsequent word then when the length exceeds that of your stretchy box you have your first line of text.
I haven't actually tried this - just thoughts off the top of my head - but it's a starting point.

I've seen this done by counting the number of characters in text and having a max number of characters per line rather than the length but I guess it could be possible.
In fact there is a string wrapping routine for this in DNC's GDL Cookbook.

Barry.