TITLE BLOCK READ ANOTHER FILE?

[jkcone]

Hello all
Is there a way for a field in a title block to read an attribute & or an expression from another file (such as the master assembly file) in the design folder which isn't assembled or shown in this drawing file?

Thanks,
James

 

[hudson888]

There is but it is specifically object based and can't reliably be set up in a template. The problem with the concept you propose in theory at least is that a drawing, which is an assembly in itself, could possibly have more than one component. That requires that you direct the system to which component that each and every attribute it taken from. Parts lists do this just fine because they are propose designed to do a limited number of things in a regular way. Otherwise I suspect that you're wasting your time.

However the method is to be found in adding any annotation, expanding the full dialog and using the relationships tab to check out object attributes. It isn't a part attribute, those only refer to the current working part, you need to select the component to see its part attributes and when added as linked annotations they'll take the form of <W!25660@NAME> where the number 25660 refers to the object that is assigned to the component you pick in the assembly. This number is more or less randomly assigned by the system and that's why what you're asking becomes a chore.

You could write some code to do something similar for you.

Or you could search this forum for previous posts because this one gets asked all the time.

If you just want a work around then assign the same attribute names to the strings that you use in the component and in the drawing and create the drawing title block around those attribute names. Then if you want to cut and paste the attributes from the component into the drawing it will work. It does involve changing parts to do this but apart from that is is relatively straightforwardly accessed from with File>Properties and the Attributes Tab or using the ANT. There are copy and paste Icons that you should recognise and CTRL and SHIFT selection methods work to allow the selection of multiple attributes at once. When you go back into the drawing and paste them over the originals the title block should simply update and display the pasted text.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

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