Macro to copy modelspace object down by known paperspace distance

I have toyed with a few options, but cannot seem to find one that will work.

Trying to copy a text object down by 3.5 paperspace units.

I have been trying variations of saving the distance as an environment variable, but then the copy command will not allow the syntax for returning that value.

Above is what the command line ought to look like at 1:100. But then it needs to say -0.7 (instead of -0.35) at 1:200 and so on.

So I thought something like this might work:

Copy;Displacement;0,('spacetrans;-3.5),0;;

But it returns

I have tried the same with 'CAL expressions. This would be something like

Copy;'cal;'spacetrans;3.5;<180;

more simply, I am trying to return 0.35

which will move it a distance of 0.35 at an angle of 180 degrees.

Is there another way I can tackle this? The only difficult part is 'spacetrans, or some way of copying at a different height depending on the viewport scale.

I probably should have put "variable paperspace y-axis distance" in the title.

More simply, is possible to return a DIESEL variable as either a vector or a displacement in the copy or move commands?

Do you mean something like this, it needs you to have selected the objects first within an active paperspace viewport (though you could adapt the macro to allow user selection), it then copies those objects -3.5 paperspace units, it should work for whatever scale the viewport currently has.

^C^C^Ccopy;0,0;0,$M=$(/,-3.5,$(getvar,cannoscalevalue));

That's it! I got to admit though, I don't even understand how it works! Haha.

Oh wait, I got it now, so it returns (-3.5/cannoscalevalue) as the change in y axis.

Nice. I have tried many times for many different applications to process a DIESEL expression inside of a command expecting coordinates and have never been able to get a single one to work. Made me wonder if my syntax was incorrect or if it was simply not possible.

Solid work as always steven-g.

The -3.5 is the value that you gave (obviously), the variable cannoscalevalue reflects the value selected in the viewport scale box, which also controls the annotation scale, this only works if you have the scale value picked (if you are zooming in and out of a viewport then the value will not be correct). I wish I could claim to know all this stuff, but to be honest I just spotted that this value changed when you change the viewport scale, the rest was just fudging untill something worked.

This doesn't actually work with coordinates, it just works out a single value and assigns it to the Y axis, working with coordinates is a bit different (and requires more fudging)

Yeah, we always work in lock viewports with cannoscale set correctly (using a button macro of course), so I have already tested and your solution works at any of our drawing scales.

The final macro for your interest is:

^C^CUCS;View;Copy;Previous;;0,0;0,$M=$(/,-3.5,$(getvar,cannoscalevalue));

It is the second in a series (the first one picks thems into the selection set then leaves them for user to edit text).