make text from exploded attribute

Long preamble but there is a question further on....

The story so far.

The project manager comes to me on Monday and asks for some CAD Borders.

"Why?"

"Because we have a contract draughtsman (in another place) who is doing some urgent jobs for us."

so I send him some borders with the instruction "they are blocks with attributes so you MUST insert them into your drawing. DO NOT explode them or use them to start your new drawings."

Last night, 5 minutes before the drawings needed to be sent out the project manager arrives at my desk.....

"Fred has finished the drawings but couldn't get spaces into the drawing titles."

"That's because he has exploded the blocks in exactly the way I told him not to. Where are the drawings?"

anyway, I ran out of time and they have gone out wrong. Which finally gets me to the question,

Is there an easy way to convert the TAG part of an exploded block into text? I know I can ctrl-c/ctrl-v. I know I could write some VBA to do it but we are moving (again) today so I don't have time for that right now. Has anybody got a ready made LISP I can use? The problem has gone away but it will come back - I want to be ready.

Dave, I got the attached lsp file from this link - http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=40372

Just remember to rename the attached, so that it has a .lsp file extension

AttDef2Text.txt

Thanks Jon, worked perfectly

I would have suggested using Express Tools "Explode Attributes to Text" or at the command line "Burst".

Both those options do not appear to make the TAG into text; they change the Value entered into text; nor are they of any use on attribute definition that have previously been exploded from their original block

but that gives you text from what had been input, not from the TAG.

Was that today's trick question. The thread title says "make text from exploded attribute", but your question is to make text of the TAG.

No excuses, I must polish my glasses a bit more often

it was in the original question, just a long way down.

actually, you answered "explode attribute to make text", I asked "make text from exploded attribute" so I remove any appology.

I always just do a BURST on blocks, then the attributes change to text without any prompt

but as we have already pointed out to eldon, that does not give the desired result here.

actually, you answered "explode attribute to make text", I asked "make text from exploded attribute" so I remove any appology.

Many folk would have a hard time following the nuances of the difference, but I was the one apologising - the OP is never wrong!!