Converting a text string to a known block

[colby82]

Hello,

question for ya all out there.. so, in a drawing, i have several text strings, 's', that i would like to change to a known block... is this able to be done? there are over 3000 's' in the drawing, hoping to change them all to the same block. let me know if this can be done. thanks

colby

[neophoible]

Hi, Colby,

Yes, this type of replacement is certainly possible, though it will likely have to be via AutoLISP. Somebody has probably already done smth like this. The easiest thing to program would be for inserting the block at each insertion point of the text at a scale factor of 1, rotation 0, erasing the ‘s’ text afterward. Would that be sufficient? If not, tell us what else you would need.

[colby82]

that is exactly what i need, and i have been scouring the net looking for a lisp routine that would work, or i could edit slgihtly, since i am not a lisp expert there is noway i could make one from scratch.

[neophoible]

OK. Just to make sure I know what I’m dealing with before I get started, please enter the LISP code below on the command line (you can simply copy and paste), select an ‘s’, then post the full result here. It will give the AutoLISP entity data list (a bunch of stuff in parentheses) of the selected item regardless of what it is.

 
(setq E (car (entsel)) N E L (entget E))

[colby82]

here is what i got in return

((-1 . <Entity name: 7ffff1de860>) (0 . "TEXT") (330 . <Entity
name: 7ffff7119f0>) (5 . "613E") (100 . "AcDbEntity") (67 . 0) (410 . "Model")
(8 . "Pole") (100 . "AcDbText") (10 638134.0 5.87584e+006 0.0) (40 . 15.7653)
(1 . "s") (50 . 4.74066) (41 . 1.0) (51 . 0.0) (7 . "Font10800") (71 . 0) (72 .
1) (11 638142.0 5.87584e+006 0.0) (210 0.0 0.0 1.0) (100 . "AcDbText") (73 . 2))

thanks a lot!!

colby

[neophoible]

OK. This looks good. It may take me a few minutes to sort this out. In the meantime, be sure to do a backup SAVE of your drawing just in case! This is always true, of course. And you will want to test it with just a few instances of ‘s’ in a test drawing first, just to make sure it works. So you can go ahead and set up a TEST dwg if you haven’t already. The 3000 shouldn’t take too long, but long enough.

[JPlanera]

Wouldnt QSELECT work? Once all the 's' are selected, they can be manipulated anyway you want..

Edit: i take that back... nevermind upon re reading the OP question...

[neophoible]

Well, I started on it and thought I just about had it, then manged to lock up my machine! If someone else doesn't jump in, I'll plan to tackle this tomorrow. One way or another, I believe help is on its way. Just hang in there.

[neophoible]

Well, I decided to keep going since I felt so close. It's kinda down n dirty but does the trick for the specific situation. I tested it with BORDER, so you will need to put your block's name in place of that. TBR was for Text-Block-Replace.

 
(defun C:TBR (
  / Text_set    ;               
    Set_index   ; 
    Insert_pt    
    BlockName        
    New_elist   ;
             )
; This assumes there is at least one TEXT object with value "s" AND that the
;  BLOCk name is already defined in the drawing        
  (prompt "\nSelecting text to replace...")
; If your text is other than "s", then replace the "s" with yours
  (setq Text_set (ssget "X" '(
    (-4 . "<AND")
      (0 . "TEXT") (1 . "s")
    (-4 . "AND>")
  )              )           )
  (setq Set_index (sslength Text_set))
; Need to put your block name in the quotes!
  (setq BlockName "BORDER")
  (command "Select" Text_set "")
  (prompt (strcat
    "\nReplacing " (rtos Set_index 2 0)
    " occurrence(s) of TEXT:\"s\"" 
    " with BLOCK:\"" BlockName "\"..."
  )       )
  (if (not (>= Set_index 1)) (exit))
  (repeat Set_index 
    (setq Set_index (1- Set_index))
    (setq New_elist (entget (ssname Text_set Set_index)))
    (setq Insert_pt (cdr (assoc 11 New_elist)))
    (command "._INSERT" BlockName "S" "" "R" "" Insert_pt)
  )
  (prompt "\nErasing the text...")
  (Command "._ERASE" Text_set "")
  (prompt "Done.")
  (princ)
)   
(C:TBR)

[BIGAL]

Ia a check for S & s (0 . "TEXT") (1 . "s") required remember there are 52 characters in the alphabet.