Search for a layer and create if it doesn't exist

Hello, I am hoping that someone can help me with creating a lisp routine that will search an open drawing for a specific layer, and if that layer doesn't exist within the drawing, then the lisp routine will create it (specifying a color, linetype, etc). Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to CADTutor.

This old post may be of use to you.

Also, consider:

(if (tblsearch "layer" "[color=red]YourLayerName[/color]")
 ;; Layer exists
 ;; Layer does not exist
)

Lots of examples are there in the forum , just search and you would get what you looking for .

This old post may be of use to you.

Thanks Renderman, I am pretty new to this. I tried to pick my way through the code in the post that you linked to without much success. It looks like it picks a layer from an excel (csv) file. I will try to find something on the forums to accompany the table search function that you posted, and post my results.

Thanks Renderman, I am pretty new to this. I tried to pick my way through the code in the post that you linked to without much success. It looks like it picks a layer from an excel (csv) file. I will try to find something on the forums to accompany the table search function that you posted, and post my results.

You're welcome.

If you're just starting out, you might consider the -LAYER Command, before getting into some of the complexities inherent to the CSV method noted in my other post.

Hello, I am hoping that someone can help me with creating a lisp routine that will search an open drawing for a specific layer, and if that layer doesn't exist within the drawing, then the lisp routine will create it (specifying a color, linetype, etc). Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

(command "-layer" "make" "text" "color" "7" "" "")

or

(command "-layer" "m" "text" "c" "7" "" "")

If the layer exists it just makes it the current layer, sets the color to 7, if the layer doesn't exist it makes it and set the color to 7.

Thanks for all of your help everyone!

rkent, your post was exactly what I was looking for

The following tutorial post may also help:

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?65302-Create-layers-with-LISP&p=447101&viewfull=1#post447101