Need help getting MY AC10 title right

[Anonymous]

I have created a title block I like with a couple of objects and the text I require, but I am having 2 problems:
1) how do I make the title block "stretchy" to match the width of the drawing?
2) the title blocks I create always wind up overlapping the drawing meaning the bottom of the title block aligns with the bottom of the drawing. How do I make the top of the title block line up with the bottom of the drawing?

[Link]

FWIW I got this official reply from GS on setting the stretchiness of titles and their position relative to the drawing:

1) how do I make the title block "stretchy" to match the width of the drawing?
It is not so simple, please see the attached sample object (Example Drawing Title.gsm). In the 2D script at "Draw Your own Drawing Title below this" comment can you write the shape of the Drawing Title.
In custom scripts you can use "titleWidth" GDL variable to set the width of the title.

This sample object demonstrates:
- alignment to a Drawing, Grid, Layout
- automatic streching to Drawing/Grid/Layout width
- setting vertical position

To get Autostrech you have to know the following GDL parameters:
- "AC_TitleFitMode" : indicates the alignment of the object (Drawing, Grid, or Layout)
- "AC_ManualPosition" indicates if the user moved the Drawing Title object manually from the drawing ("Move sub-element" editing method on the Pet palette)
- “AC_DrawingRect”, “AC_GridRect”, and “AC_LayoutRect” indicates the upper-right and upper-left corner position, of the Drawing/Grid/Layout to the Drawing, and the bounding box rotation angle of the Drawing/Grid/Layout.

Using this data the object is capable to compute the width.

2) the title blocks I create always wind up overlapping the drawing meaning the bottom of the title block aligns with the bottom of the drawing. How do I make the top of the title block line up with the bottom of the drawing?

In the 2D script you have to offset the coordinate system vertically using ADD2 GDL command. The offset amount is equal to the height of the Drawing Title.
The "Example Drawing Title" object uses "titleOffset" variable.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tips, I have been trying to adjust my title block to a working format (still not successful, but I am a GDL novice) i will try fix my size problem with an updated understanding of these parameters. I still need more help dealing with the CALL command. I am using it for the graphic scale, but in my title block my "called" scale is in 1:1 rather than the drawings scale, I would greatly appreciate the requirement to get a "CALL"ed scale to match the drawings scale.

[owen]

great work Link

Scott,

There are a bunch of new AC parameters available to get information about the drawing and layout the title is attached to - check out the list at the very top of the object script Link posted. You need to add these parameters to your objects parameters list (think you need to make sure your object is a Drawing Title subtype) as they are not created automatically by AC. They should return all the drawing/layout information you need to use inside your script (e.g AC_DrawingScale returns the placed drawings scale and AC_OriginalDrawingScale returns the placed drawings original scale in the event it has been rescaled on the layout).

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for all your help, I finally have a title block that does everything I wanted it to do. I did have a lot of trouble with incorporating a graphic scale that would change with the drawing, so for anyone else having touble with this: by copying the line:

CALL "Graphic_Sc_NCS_drawTit" PARAMETERS gs_cont_pen=17, gs_t.........

from the ncs title block (and making the parameter adjustments you need) the graphic scale should work. For some reason I could never make my graphic scale respond to the drawing, and i could not find the "Graphic_Sc_NCS_drawTit" to see how this object accomplished that task.

There are still some fine tuning I would like to do, and would appreciate any tips you folks out there could offer. The most important parameter that I would like to incorporate would be some drawing type intelligence. I want the north arrow to automatically be show or hidden according to the drawing type, in something of this manner:

IF drawingtype = plan view GOSUB (North arrow subset)
ELSE ....

Next I would like the default selection would not have uniform pen selected. I am pretty sure this is not something scripted into the GDL, but I have not been able to figure out where this default can be set.

Last and least, I would like to have the position of the north arrow be related to the width of the drawing title, do automatically adjust the location based on the length of the text.