Referencing entities within a drawing. 2

[knobhead]

Not so much a problem, but a curiousity. I'm sure that there must be a way of doing this, but I can't find anything in the help.
When I'm doing a jig and tool layout sheet, it consists of a drawing of the finished jig, or tool, assembly, and on the same sheet is a drawing of each individual component that makes up the assembly. So if I was designing a screwdriver, there would be a drawing of a complete screw driver at the top, and underneath that would be a drawing of the handle, and underneath that would be a drawing of the blade.
Now, is there a way, WITHOUT using XREFS, of working in the drawing so that any modifications to the handle (say), would also affect the handle on the assembly drawing?
So in other words, if I added a chamfer to the handle on the component drawing, a chamfer would automatically appear in the same place on the handle in the assembly drawing?

XREFs are no good, though I know they'd work. Believe me, from bitter experience...other people work on these drawings too, some of whom are still getting to grips with the concept of drawing on computers. Trying to explain xrefs to people who prefer drawing boards is just far too complicated...
So I suppose what I want to do, is use an xref without the X part..!
Anyone?

 

[tigrek]

AutoCAD 2000 does have those event handlers in VBA. Though I have not used them yet, I know that an Sub OnChange() can be attached to any entity. Within the sub will be the modifications to follow that change automatically.

The reason I did not try it is the feeling that I would have to attach extended data to re-identify lines and circles, which would be cumbersome.

Has anyone tried this? Any good?

 

[TWong]

If I read you correctly, it sounds like a layer management problem. Try this -
Layer names
handle
blade
handle dims
blade dims
assembly dims

For the handle, turn on layers 'handle' and 'handle dims' and all others off.

For the blade, turn on layers 'blade' and blade dims' and all others off.

For the assembly, turn on layers 'handle', 'blade' and 'assembly dims', and all others off.

Am I making any sense?

 

[Allan]

I understand what it is that you want to do, however, I don't think you'll find AutoCAD capable of that kind of dwg management. I do know that Autodesk Inventor has the capability to link directly to a solid model, and if the model changes, the associated dwgs/assys will change, right down to the packaging size if you take things that far. From my experience, Parametric solid modeling software , such as Pro/E, is the way to go for that type of power.

I'd be interested to learn if you find out a method to achieve the same result in AutoCAD. design@waterplay.com

 

[JFinlay]

One way to do this is through Extended Entity Data (EED) and it would take a substantial amount of programming to set up a series of tool such as Chamfer and Radius.

Your drawing will need to be created with the EED added to each entity to enable the selection of individual entities that require alteration.

An example of this would be adding a door to a plan with an and automatic update in the elevation.

Not impossible just difficult.

 

[knobhead]

Oh well, I use LT so it looks like I'm all out of luck anyway. Thanks everyone though. It always surprises me how much useless commands are in acad, and then they leave out something really cool... The boundary command...absoleutly useless. Having a really simple plot command..nowhere to be seen...