Measure script

[MisterJingles]

Hi all

 

I'm wondering if there is a script (I dare not say LISP as I have never used LISP routines) which can simplify my life a little.

 

Our company manufacture and sell modular buildings, our walls are made primarily of 42mm thick 1179mm long panels. So when drawing the plan view of our buildings in MS we simply offset 1 line from another by 42 units and this represents our wall thickness.

These buildings can be very large and can comprise of hundreds and hundreds of panels. The sales guys are often asking me for a measurement of all the walls making up a building so that they know how many panels to cost for.

Currently I sit in MS and measure each length of wall individually which takes a fair amount of time. Is there a script I could run instead which calculates the total length of line segments on my WALL layer which I can then divide in half to get an approximate total wall length?

 

Sorry for the long-winded question, any ideas?

 

Thanks

Rob

[ReMark]

The drawings have dimensions on them don't they?

[MisterJingles]

The drawings have dimensions on them don't they?

 

Of course, but like I said they can be really large buildings such as the one pictured below. As you can see this can take up some time measuring manually.

 

[SLW210]

Doesn't AutoCAD Mechanical have Bill of Materials capabilities?

[ReMark]

Aren't there lisp routines that can add dimensions?

[MisterJingles]

Doesn't AutoCAD Mechanical have Bill of Materials capabilities?

 

It does, I haven't used it before. At first glance it seems complicated but if its what I'm looking for I could spend some time familiarizing myself with it.

I realise I could also do an Extraction and extract the lines and calculate from there but again this is long-winded.

Am I missing something? Is a script, or possibly a LISP routine, not an option here?

Edited April 3, 2013 by MisterJingles

[ReMark]

Re: lisp routines. Read this all the way through (it's not that long).

 

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?71186-Add-%28sum-up%29-All-dimensions-in-drawing

[MisterJingles]

Re: lisp routines. Read this all the way through (it's not that long).

 

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?71186-Add-%28sum-up%29-All-dimensions-in-drawing

 

Thanks ReMark, we are getting closer to what I'm after. The only hassle Ill have with that LISP is that I do not dimension every single panel on a layout, and also one dimension will often represent multiple walls so would not give me an accurate calculation.

[ReMark]

I did the best I could. The rest is up to you.

[rkent]

First isolate the wall layer then look into a lisp program like

http://www.jtbworld.com/lisp/bomlengths.htm

Finally divide by 2.

[MisterJingles]

Thanks rkent this is exactly what I am after. Works a charm! Thanks for your help.