Help with variable radius

[zadnytsa]

I do allot of work with security and fire systems. Constantly doing layouts for things like sprinkler heads and motion detectors etc.

I'm not sure if this is doable but what I'd like to see is this.

Create a block for let's say a smoke detector with an effective radius of 50 feet.

The effective area however needs to be affected by things like walls and pillars etc. so the end result would be different depending on where the block is placed in the drawing.

This is something that would be very useful for doing system layouts and totally save hours of time.

Is this something that could be done in AutoCAD. I also use 3dmax for some things too and am more familiar with that however I'd like to see if it's doable in autoCAD first.

Hope I'm not to vague.

Thanks for any help.

[Cad64]

So you want the block to automatically update itself depending on where it's placed in the drawing? Unless they've added some type of smart blocks to 2010, I don't think that's possible.

I just realized you're using Electrical. I have moved your thread to the "Electrical" section.

[zadnytsa]

is this something that could be programmed in Lisp or VB?