Polyline Problems

[Tiger]

Hiya!

Just started a new job and I made the mistake of claiming I'm pretty good at AutoCAD :wink: - which was a big mistake! But hopefully somebody out there can help med keep up my apperance of being a AutoCAD Master!

Anywho - Q: is there any way of getting a list of the points in a polyline with info relative to one another? That is, not the coordinates relative to origo. but the X-Y-Z-distances from the previous point?

[fuccaro]

Hello TigerRedhead and welcome!
If you have the coords relative to the origin -just subtract them and you will get them relative to the previous one.
Say (X1,Y1) and (X2,Y2) are the coords of the first and second point relative to the current UCS. The second point relative to the first one is at (X2-X1,Y2-Y1).

[Tiger]

Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah - I have been using DIST and ID to get that info now (I need the X/Y from the previous point, but Z from origin) - but it just takes so much time... I was hoping there was a command wich would list the info in one go, but I guess it's just wishful thinking - wouldn't it be faboulus if AutoCAD could read our minds :-)

[eldon]

If you haven't yet explored lisp, there is a work-around in AutoCAD.

If you LIST the polyline in a full screen text window, each vertex is on one line with its X, Y & Z coordinate. Then by copying the text, you can save in a text file (in WordPad) which you can put in a spreadsheet. With a very simple formula, you can now work out the X, Y, Z differences from point to point.

[Tiger]

I got the LIST command, and have it saved into WordPad - but into a spreadsheet? everything ends up in the same square - is there a way to import it into excel and get the text into individual cells?

[eldon]

Ah - this is a forum on AutoCAD, but having done what you want, I suppose I should let on!!

In Excel (which is the one I use), when you try to open a file other than .xls, it senses that the format is not spreadsheet format, and opens a file import wizard. This allows you to set whether the file is a fixed width or delimited and allows several different delimiters (comma, semicolon, tab, etc etc). I am sure you can manage from here.

[Cymro]

In exel

goto Data

Import external data > Import Data

find the txt file with x,y,z

with deliminators you can separate columns with commas, semicolon or even spaces.

I hope this helps

Stephen

[Tiger]

You guys!! Champs!! I promise I will never, ever ask a question about anything other than AutoCAD ever again :roll:

[eldon]

You can always ask questions on any subject, but whether you will get a sensible answer is debateable! :D