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dynamic door w/ variable swing arc resolved!


hazardman

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i finally got a chance to test out my theory about using an angular dimension as a substitution for the swing arc in a dynamic door--no more visibility states!...as most of us are aware an actual arc can not be manipulated in a dynamic block to only stretch the endpoints along it's circumferance...in answering to a thread i thought of the idea of using an angular dimension and this is the result of my trials...

 

you will note that i created a small horizontal line placed on a non-plotable layer so i can run the dimension from this to the vertical door panel...then i had to use a scale parameter to affect the "swing" size that make the door width--tricky!..i turned off all the tick and extension on the dim and overriden the dim text "" with a blank space...

 

a few development testing came up with some bugs...the first problem appeared when changing the door swing angle then altering the door size...it resulted in a skewed door panel...to resolve this i had to make sure that the stretch parameter was included with the rotation parameter...

 

the other problem was that when i had closed the door to 0 degrees the dimension angle whould appear as a semi-circle and that when i reopened the door the angle arc was further away from the door...to resolve this all i had to do was use a minimum rotation angle of 0.01--which is close enough to zero for plotting needs :wink: ...

 

another thing to note about the dimension is to make sure that make new dimension associative is on in the options or else the angle will not associate to the two entities it's dimensioning to...i also suspect that if the door opens greater then 180 degrees--which i doubt would ever hapen--the dim angle will flip to show the shortest so this trick may not be sutible for otehr types of dynamic block where a "stretchable" arc is required...

 

so anyway, just thought i'd post the block for your reverse engineering needs...

 

enjoy!

 

hm

 

(ps, this probably should go in the showcase forum but i'll leave it up to the mods to decide :wink: )

dynamic door swing hm.dwg

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  • 8 months later...

Hazardman, that's savage!

 

I've been working on dynamic blocks of a while. And have a problem with one of them that is doing my head in. maybe you would take a look at it? Should I post here or start a new post?

 

Regards,

 

DECHAL.

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Yes, it works.

Only a small observation: if you include the rotation parameter in the list of objecs affected by the scale action then the rotation grip will stay at the end of the rectangle, even after a stretch action.

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  • 11 months later...
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  • 8 months later...

All day looking for an answer to this problem, and now it looks like I have it thx to hazardman -- well almost. This is great, but I need this to go up to 359 degrees. I can make it go full circle, but the dimension line reverts to the smallest angle. I am aware of the dimangular command, but how can I apply the dimangular information to this dim line ex post facto, even if the angle is less than 180? I started with ACAD 12 years ago, now I'm on 2011 LT, so if anyone knows how I can do this in 2011 without a dim line, that would be great. :)

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could I get this beauty in metric system. tried to scale but it didn't work.

 

I would also like this in metric please, I did try and modify this but wasnt able to

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I would also like this in metric please, I did try and modify this but wasnt able to

 

You can change to metric easily: Format, Units, then choose whatever you wish.

 

I'm just baffled though: how is it even possible that AutoCAD cannot properly stretch an arc? I just cannot believe that a product as old as this, as widely used as this, and as expensive as this can't even stretch an arc properly in a dynamic block, or for that matter, without using grips in a regular screen. Which has me thinking: how do we snap to the arrowhead grip instead of the square grip because this is the source of the trouble. There are two grips on an arc, and I want to stretch not the square, but the arrowhead. Anyone know how to do that from the command line?

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I'm having trouble opening the link, it must just be me but could you send it to teafoe5@hotmail.com? I'd love to see what you came up with!

 

Right click the link and Save Target As....

 

I had trouble too. I think it is drawn as 2007. Even after I saved (downloaded) it, it still opened in 2009 a bit slow, but no issues, really.

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Oh, yeah! Leaper23, that is pretty awsome. I tried something like that a couple of years ago, gave up on the arc line, and still have a headache. It never occured to me to use a dim for the arc. That's a stroke of 'out of the box' brain thunder. Nice.

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You can change to metric easily: Format, Units, then choose whatever you wish. ?

 

As I said I have tried to change to metric, but once I chnaged it will not work again ? guess I'm not doing it correctly prehaps some kind person could please do this for me ?

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I've been messing around and have determined that if you want to get the angle to swing 360, you cannot. But you can use this workaround: you have to create a secondary dim arc for angles greater than 180. Actually, the angles must be 0.01 - 179.99, or the built in dimension functionality starts flipping things around. Then, using visibility states, turn off the first angle and turn the second angle on for angles greater than 180. I have another static 180 arc that turns on when I'm drawing objects that spin greater than 180. I've also added rotation for the whole thing, and a bunch of other neat stuff too. In case your wondering, I'm creating a block to represent lawn sprinkler heads, so I needed the arc to be variable, with a varied throw distance, and a bunch of other stuff as well to make drawing these systems a lot easier. If anyone wants to see this, I'll post it.

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About the metric stuff, it seems to work fine for me. Ensure your current DWG's INSUNITS is set to millimeters (use the Units command). That should automatically scale the block by 25.4 when inserting. But even using scale command / properties palette still worked for me - dynamic properties are still available.

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