Importing points

[MNMACHINIST]

If i had a list of points generated by a cmm in the form of a notepad document, how could I Import them into AutoCad?

[MikeScott]

How are they set up?

 

If they're comma delineated, you could write a scriptfile that starts the point command, or pline, and then dumps the values in there afterwards.

[MNMACHINIST]

I'm not sure how they will be set up, i'm not very good at this, so if you could give me more of a step by step i'd appreciate it. i know the basics as far as drawing in autocad, but beyond that i'm lost

[lpseifert]

Search the Lisp forum for Lee Mac's "Point Manager" routine

[fuccaro]

If the text is formatted as x,y or x,y,z you can copy/paste the text in the command line

[Bill Tillman]

There are several free lisp routines to do this. Check out this one for starters:

 

http://www.jefferypsanders.com/autolisp_IMPORTXYZ.html

 

There are some really cool people who hang out here in the forums too who can help you write a custom lisp program for more exact needs. But if your file is in x,y or x,y,z format delimited with commas then the above IMPORTXYZ will work beautifully.

 

We had a project in 2008 which created a file with a couple of thousand points. The client was pissed when they thought they would have to input all the points by hand or pay for software to import them. But I found lots of free stuff which took only seconds to create a drawing full of points.