Through the Interface

Inserting a specific Excel sheet as an AutoCAD table using .NET

Last week I received the following question from Adam Schilling:

I have enjoyed your posts on .net programming for datalinks. I have searched high and low and haven’t been able to find answers or any support to help me with a small issue. 

My code (much of which was based off of your posts from 2007) works fine, except I cannot get it to use a different sheet from the workbook that is select.  Since the option to select a specific sheet is available when adding a link manually, I would think that it would be possible to programmatically do it also.

If it would work for a post great, if not, I apologize for taking your time.

Seeing as Adam asked so nicely (and I found the question to be of broad interest, which is also important), I went ahead and dusted off the 6-year old posts that he’d referred to. [Has it really been that long since I wrote them? Sigh.]

Here’s the series that I’ve refreshed for the purposes of this post:

1. Creating an AutoCAD table linked to an Excel spreadsheet using .NET

2. Updating an AutoCAD table linked to an Excel spreadsheet using .NET

3. Updating an Excel spreadsheet from a linked AutoCAD table using .NET

It’s really the code from the first that has been modified to allow selection of a specific sheet, but the code was all in the same file (and the compiler warned of some obsolete functions), so I decided to update the other commands, too, rather than stripping them out.

The quick answer to Adam’s question is that you can specify a particular sheet to link to by passing its name (using the “!” character as a separator) into the DataLink’s ConnectionString property. e.g.:

dl.ConnectionString = "spreadsheet.xlsx!Sheet2";

That’s really all there is to it. But that would make for a pretty short post, so I went ahead and added some code that, for a selected spreadsheet, presents the list of contained sheets to the user and asks for one to be selected.

While not really being what the post is about – the main point is to show the AutoCAD side of things – there are a few different ways to access the contents of an Excel spreadsheet from .NET.

The one I’d personally have preferred to have used is the OleDb provider for Office. The problem with that approach relates to getting the right version of the component working for your app, even though 32- and 64-bit versions are both available (at least for Office 2010, for Office 2007 there’s just the 32-bit version).

Here’s my own situation, as an example: I’m running 32-bit Office on a 64-bit system (the main reason being that’s the way our IT department supports it, as far as I can tell), which means the installer doesn’t let me install the 64-bit component (probably because it needs to match the underlying Office version, which I suppose is fair enough). But while I can install the 32-bit version, my .NET application inside AutoCAD needs to be either x64 or “Any CPU”, and so leads to the “The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine” exception being thrown when the connection attempt is made.

Which led me back to using the COM library for Excel, instead (for which I added a COM project reference to the “Microsoft Excel 14.0 Object Library”). Using this component actually fires up an instance of Excel in the background – which certainly seems like overkill just to access the list of sheets contained in a spreadsheet – but it’s reliable and easy to get working. And the code is certainly more readable.

Speaking of the code, here’s the updated C# code letting a user select a specific Excel sheet for insertion (in the TFS command):

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Windows;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;

 

namespace LinkToExcel

{

  public class Commands

  {

    [CommandMethod("S2T")]

    static public void UpdateTableFromSpreadsheet()

    {

      var doc =

        Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;

      var db = doc.Database;

      var ed = doc.Editor;

 

      var opt = new PromptEntityOptions("\nSelect table to update");

      opt.SetRejectMessage("\nEntity is not a table.");

      opt.AddAllowedClass(typeof(Table), false);     

 

      var per = ed.GetEntity(opt);

      if (per.Status != PromptStatus.OK)

        return;

 

      using (var tr = db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction())

      {

        try

        {

          var obj = tr.GetObject(per.ObjectId, OpenMode.ForRead);

          var tb = obj as Table;

 

          // It should always be a table

          // but we'll check, just in case

 

          if (tb != null)

          {

            // The table must be open for write

 

            tb.UpgradeOpen();

 

            // Update data link from the spreadsheet

 

            var dlIds = tb.Cells.GetDataLink();

 

            foreach (ObjectId dlId in dlIds)

            {

              var dl =

                (DataLink)tr.GetObject(dlId, OpenMode.ForWrite);

              dl.Update(

                UpdateDirection.SourceToData,

                UpdateOption.None

              );

 

              // And the table from the data link

 

              tb.UpdateDataLink(

                UpdateDirection.SourceToData,

                UpdateOption.None

              );

            }

          }

          tr.Commit();

          ed.WriteMessage(

            "\nUpdated the table from the spreadsheet."

          );

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

          ed.WriteMessage(

            "\nException: {0}",

            ex.Message

          );

        }

      }

    }

 

    [CommandMethod("T2S")]

    static public void UpdateSpreadsheetFromTable()

    {

      var doc =

        Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;

      var db = doc.Database;

      var ed = doc.Editor;

 

      var opt =

        new PromptEntityOptions(

          "\nSelect table with spreadsheet to update"

        );

      opt.SetRejectMessage(

        "\nEntity is not a table."

      );

      opt.AddAllowedClass(typeof(Table), false);

 

      var per = ed.GetEntity(opt);

      if (per.Status != PromptStatus.OK)

        return;

 

      Transaction tr =

        db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction();

      using (tr)

      {

        try

        {

          DBObject obj =

            tr.GetObject(per.ObjectId, OpenMode.ForRead);

          Table tb = obj as Table;

 

          // It should always be a table

          // but we'll check, just in case

 

          if (tb != null)

          {

            // The table must be open for write

 

            tb.UpgradeOpen();

 

            // Update the data link from the table

 

            tb.UpdateDataLink(

              UpdateDirection.DataToSource,

              UpdateOption.ForceFullSourceUpdate

            );

 

            // And the spreadsheet from the data link

 

            var dlIds = tb.Cells.GetDataLink();

            foreach (ObjectId dlId in dlIds)

            {

              var dl =

                (DataLink)tr.GetObject(dlId, OpenMode.ForWrite);

              dl.Update(

                UpdateDirection.DataToSource,

                UpdateOption.ForceFullSourceUpdate

              );

            }

          }

          tr.Commit();

 

          ed.WriteMessage(

            "\nUpdated the spreadsheet from the table."

          );

        }

        catch (Exception ex)

        {

          ed.WriteMessage("\nException: {0}", ex.Message);

        }

      }

    }

 

    static public List<string> GetSheetNames(string excelFileName)

    {

      var listSheets = new List<string>();

 

      var excel = new Excel.Application();

      var wbs = excel.Workbooks.Open(excelFileName);

      foreach (Excel.Worksheet sheet in wbs.Worksheets)

      {

        listSheets.Add(sheet.Name);

      }

      excel.Quit();

 

      return listSheets;

    }

 

    [CommandMethod("TFS")]

    static public void TableFromSpreadsheet()

    {

      const string dlName = "Import table from Excel demo";

 

      var doc =

        Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;

      var db = doc.Database;

      var ed = doc.Editor;

 

      // Ask the user to select an XLS(X) file

 

      var ofd =

        new OpenFileDialog(

          "Select Excel spreadsheet to link",

          null,

          "xls; xlsx",

          "ExcelFileToLink",

          OpenFileDialog.OpenFileDialogFlags.

            DoNotTransferRemoteFiles

        );

 

      var dr = ofd.ShowDialog();

 

      if (dr != System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)

        return;

 

      // Display the name of the file and the contained sheets

 

      ed.WriteMessage(

        "\nFile selected was \"{0}\". Contains these sheets:",

        ofd.Filename

      );

 

      // First we get the sheet names

 

      var sheetNames = GetSheetNames(ofd.Filename);

 

      if (sheetNames.Count == 0)

      {

        ed.WriteMessage(

          "\nWorkbook doesn't contain any sheets."

        );

        return;

      }

 

      // And loop through, printing their names

 

      for (int i=0; i < sheetNames.Count; i++)

      {

        var name = sheetNames[i];

 

        ed.WriteMessage("\n{0} - {1}", i + 1, name);

      }

 

      // Ask the user to select one

 

      var pio = new PromptIntegerOptions("\nSelect a sheet");

      pio.AllowNegative = false;

      pio.AllowZero = false;

      pio.DefaultValue = 1;

      pio.UseDefaultValue = true;

      pio.LowerLimit = 1;

      pio.UpperLimit = sheetNames.Count;

 

      var pir = ed.GetInteger(pio);

      if (pir.Status != PromptStatus.OK)

        return;

 

      // Ask for the insertion point of the table

 

      var ppr = ed.GetPoint("\nEnter table insertion point");

      if (ppr.Status != PromptStatus.OK)

        return;

 

      // Remove any Data Link, if one exists already

 

      var dlm = db.DataLinkManager;

      var dlId = dlm.GetDataLink(dlName);

      if (dlId != ObjectId.Null)

      {

        dlm.RemoveDataLink(dlId);

      }

 

      // Create and add the new Data Link, this time with

      // a direction connection to the selected sheet

 

      var dl = new DataLink();

      dl.DataAdapterId = "AcExcel";

      dl.Name = dlName;

      dl.Description = "Excel fun with Through the Interface";

      dl.ConnectionString =

        ofd.Filename + "!" + sheetNames[pir.Value - 1];

      dl.DataLinkOption =

        DataLinkOption.PersistCache;

      dl.UpdateOption |=

        (int)UpdateOption.AllowSourceUpdate;

 

      dlId = dlm.AddDataLink(dl);

 

      using (var tr = doc.TransactionManager.StartTransaction())

      {

        tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(dl, true);

 

        var bt =

          (BlockTable)tr.GetObject(

            db.BlockTableId,

            OpenMode.ForRead

          );

 

        // Create our table

 

        var tb = new Table();

        tb.TableStyle = db.Tablestyle;

        tb.Position = ppr.Value;

        tb.Cells.SetDataLink(dlId, true);

        tb.GenerateLayout();

 

        // Add it to the drawing

 

        var btr =

          (BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(

            db.CurrentSpaceId,

            OpenMode.ForWrite

          );

 

        btr.AppendEntity(tb);

        tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(tb, true);

        tr.Commit();

      }

    }

  }

}

When we run the TFS command, we see the user gets presented with the usual file selection dialog, but then a command-line interface for choosing a specific sheet from the selected spreadsheet:

Command: TFS

File selected was "C:\Data\Spreadsheet.xlsx". Contains these sheets:

1 - Sheet1

2 - Sheet2

3 - Sheet3

Select a sheet <1>: 2

Enter table insertion point:

Which results in the specified sheet getting inserted as a table into the current AutoCAD drawing.

Updated set of Leap Motion samples available

I’ve been beavering away in an attempt to streamline the AutoCAD-Leap Motion integration samples I posted last week. Here’s the updated project.

This latest set generally gets better results than the last ones, and the LEAPEXT command certainly feels more snappy and accurate. I’m still trying to find out why the controller occasionally stops seeing my fingers – it could well be down to lighting or to the fact I’m using a Plexiglas surface about the device – but I’ll keep looking into it.

I know it’s still likely to be a month or so before most of you get your hands on a device (assuming you have the interest to do so), but I thought I’d keep on posting the samples as I update them, anyway.

A little bird tells me there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be at AU 2013 presenting on Leap Motion and Kinect Fusion (two separate sessions), during which a descendant of the above samples are likely to make an appearance.

Embedding a 123D Catch scene in an HTML page

A little over a year ago I first saw the HTML version of 123D Catch. My first thought was “that’s cool!” and my second was “I wonder whether you can embed the WebGL control to host a 123D Catch scene in an external web-page?”. Basically allowing bloggers – or people posting to forums, perhaps – to embed 3D content captured using 123D Catch in their pages, much as you would do with a YouTube video.

At the recent technical conference in Boston, I asked someone about the feature. Sure enough it had been added some time ago (probably around the time I was thinking about it, originally) and I was provided with instructions on how to make use of it.

Firstly – and logically enough – you need to publish a scene to the 123D Catch gallery. I went ahead and created a really quick scene (I’m working on something more complex, but it’s taking longer than I’d hoped to get right, so it’ll be for another day) and published it to the gallery:

On balance my choice of a ZX Spectrum – which has semi-reflective patches of plastic and lots of uniform area – probably wasn’t the best, but this is really about the process of embedding, not about capturing a model.

Once up there, it was pretty straightforward to log into the 123D Catch website and find it in my list of recent work.

Clicking on the embed icon to the right brought up the options to customize the HTML fragment and copy it into your page:

And here is the end result (although of a slightly cleaner model than the one shown above), which needs a WebGL-capable browser (Chrome, Firefox or Safari) for the 3D mode to work. You'll also need to remember to click on "3D view" in the filmstrip at the bottom to bring up that view.

Dunroamin

I’ve now finished my recent trio of long-haul trips: the San Francisco Bay Area in late April, Singapore in mid-May and Boston in early June. So I can take a breather for a few weeks (maybe even months), at least: I have no firm travel plans until AU, although no doubt something will come up before then.

[For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the title of the post is a reference to a common British house name. In the UK people often name (or used to, anyway) their houses in this way to announce that they’re “Done Roaming – from now on I’ll stay here at home” (as explained in this description of Terry Pratchett’s meta-parody “Dunmanifestin”).]

During this last trip, in particular, there seemed to be a strong emphasis on upgrading my own use of travel-related technology. So this post is about that.

It started with my outbound travel to Boston. My aim was to go as paperless as possible, now that I finally have a smartphone worth its salt. I bought by rail ticket via the SBB mobile app – no paper ticket needed. I also checked in for my flight via the Swiss mobile app, so no paper boarding pass needed there, either. So far, so good.

I ended up getting a normal taxi from the airport – which I paid for with folding money and needed to collect a paper receipt for the eventual expense claim – but I later found out that Uber was available in Boston (thanks to Nick Zeeben for the tip :-). This would have gotten me all the way door-to-door without worrying about a single piece of paper, but hey.

I did end up using Uber a couple of times, during my stay in Boston: to get home after an outing to the Red Sox with colleagues and then to get to the airport on Wednesday night. I’d previously signed up for Uber during a trip to Paris, but I hadn’t actually ended up using it: the Boston promotion was the push I needed (and the service worked brilliantly, even with the additional demand caused by UBERx being free).

The other travel-related technology I ended up using was Zagster. For $15 per day I rented a bicycle from the hotel in Cambridge and used it to visit MIT, Harvard and downtown Boston. They provide you with a pin to unlock a compartment at the back of the bike that holds a key to the provided D-lock. All very clever.

An alternative bicycle-sharing system in Boston is Hubway, which lets you pick up bikes and check them back in at locations all over the city. This can prove very cost-effective if you manage to time your trips to be less than 30 minutes between hubs, but I suspect I ended up being better off with Zagster for my particular usage pattern.

photo credit: Chasqui (Luis Tamayo) via photopin cc

A different approach for using Leap Motion with AutoCAD

I mentioned a presentation I gave in Singapore a few weeks that talked about integrating Kinect and Leap Motion with AutoCAD. After the session I had a good conversation (in person and then by email) with Nagappan Nachiappan. Nagappan is a talented young software engineer working on AutoCAD’s JavaScript API, but has a strong interest in HCI (his final year degree project used computer vision techniques to implement a virtual mouse that moves with your hand).

Nagappan was responding to concerns I’d raised about the ergonomic impact of hovering your hand above the device. His primary question was “can the Leap Motion controller see through glass?”. We had some fun trying it out, there and then, but we didn’t make much progress: the glass tables in the meeting room were too opaque and trying it with the window didn’t work (the Singapore sunshine was just too bright).

I gave it a try on returning home with a piece of Plexiglas and found that – while the sensitivity is reduced somewhat – it did work, and it would absolutely be feasible to implement an approach where the Leap Motion is covered by a piece of glass (or Plexiglas) which is then used as a surface for user input.

That’s where things got interesting: for this week’s internal technical summit, I threw together a prototype that showed just that in action. After calibrating the level of the glass (by tapping it or pointing to it and hitting the space bar), it’s possible to draw circles and other shapes on the surface that can then be extruded vertically by lifting your hand away from the surface. Fun stuff!

Here’s the updated source project – I took the opportunity to refactor the code, so it’s looking a lot cleaner – and here’s a video I took of the surface in action:

I think the results are pretty interesting. While not perfect – it’s probably worth experimenting with different materials, to improve the sensitivity and therefore the user’s control – it does show one possible approach for mitigating some of the ergonomic issues the Leap Motion device presents. Having a hard surface makes a huge difference from a usability perspective. Thanks for the inspiration, Nagappan!

Strategic alliance between Autodesk and NetSuite

This isn’t new news – it was announced a few weeks ago at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld 2013 event – but I thought I’d mention it here mainly because of a personal connection of mine. The announcement was regarding a broad strategic alliance between Autodesk and NetSuite, as well as a specific technology integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite ERP.

Here’s the on-stage announcement of the alliance which includes a pretty neat video (that I hadn’t seen before) introducing Autodesk technology to the ERP-centric audience:

Here’s a demo of the technology integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite Manufacturing Edition. As an area, ERP seems a little dry to me, to be quite honest, so I expect it was light relief for the audience to see some 3D modeling and simulation in action (a welcome change from all that tabular and chart data ;-).

Again, the reason I’m talking about this is personal: after all, there are various other blogs that talk about Autodesk’s manufacturing-related technologies. So let’s get on with explaining that connection.

The person initiating the alliance from NetSuite’s side was Guido Haarmans, their VP of business development responsible for technology partnerships, although subsequently there were clearly many people involved in making the partnership happen, including Jim White and Brian Roepke from Autodesk. Many readers of this blog will remember Guido from when he worked at Autodesk: he held a number of roles in the company, one of which was a role I held myself for several years, managing the worldwide DevTech team (although it was known as DevCon or DCG – for Developer Consulting Group – during Guido’s tenure).

Guido’s first management position at Autodesk was in Switzerland, where he built the European Developer Support team. It’s thanks to Guido that I ended up at Autodesk and (eventually) living here in Neuchâtel: apart from the fact he hired me into the company, he did a stellar job of selling this particular company location to me during my second-round interview, picking me up from Neuchâtel train station in his Mazda MX-5 (called a Miata in the US) with the roof down. I remember him telling me on the phone before I flew across from the UK not to pack too large a suitcase. I later found out it was so the bag would fit into the boot of Guido’s car. :-)

Guido had built a pretty amazing team of people (prior to me joining, anyway :-) pulling in the best programming talent from various European Autodesk offices as well as bringing in some experienced programmers from outside. I was the most junior member of the team when I joined, and it really was an incredible education. I still work with several of those (very talented) people, and I always enjoy catching up with Guido when I’m across in the Bay Area.

Money designed with AutoCAD

I'm currently in Boston for an internal technical summit where I'll be presenting sessions on Kinect Fusion and Leap Motion (which will the sessions I've submitted - and will hopefully get accepted - for AU 2013). I arrived a day early and rented a bicycle from the hotel, taking the opportunity to cycle through the MIT and Harvard campuses (both of which are in Cambridge, where the summit is taking place) and then on to downtown Boston. It was really great being back in Boston after probably five years - it's still one of my favourite cities in the US.

I received this through the post, last week. A $5 bill from Doug Bell. It was designed for the recent American Numismatic Association’s National Money Show in New Orleans. Doug used the application I developed for him in conjunction with AutoCAD to design the guilloché pattern in the note’s background:

For the next event it seems Doug’s planning not only to design his notes using AutoCAD, but to use it to plot the pattern more directly onto the notes themselves. I look forward to seeing the results!

Autodesk Exchange Apps webinar

The ADN team has announced a free webinar (and free to all, not just to ADN members) on “How developers can ride and profit from the adoption wave of Autodesk Exchange Apps”, being held on June 13th, 2013.

We’ve all seen how mobile-focused marketplaces such as Apple’s App Store and Google Play have revolutionised the way we find and use apps on these platforms. Apple and Microsoft have provided stores for users of their desktop operating systems to find apps that work there, too.

As a large application vendor with a vibrant development community, we see an opportunity to serve our customers better by making it really easy for them to find apps our developers provide to meet their specific business needs. That’s what Autodesk Exchange Apps stores are all about.

There are now 15 Autodesk Exchange Apps stores for our various platform products, with over a million visits and 250,000 downloads during the last year.

Sign up for the webinar to find out how you can take advantage of this infrastructure to get your own apps in the hands of customers.

photo credit: ed_needs_a_bicycle via photopin cc

Fixing block draw-order in AutoCAD drawings exported by SmartSketch using .NET

Here’s a question I received recently from Dustin Vest, who works as a PDMS administrator at Fluor:

I am having a problem with Intergraph’s SmartSketch dwg files it exports... I found some code on your site that got me into the blocks, but I can’t seem to change the draworder of entities within the block. SmartPlant 3D exports all the symbols as blocks but with wipeouts on top of the rest of the block.

Dustin provided some code that was very nearly working – it really didn’t need much work to get it in shape – and has kindly allowed me to share it, here.

The below C# code defines a WTB command (for “WipeoutsToBottom” – it’s not a new Internet swearcronym ;-) that moves any wipeouts to the bottom of the selected block (or of all blocks in the drawing if the user hits Enter).

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;

 

namespace BlockFixer

{

  public class Commands

  {

    [CommandMethod("WTB")]

    public static void WipeoutsToBottom()

    {

      var doc = Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;

      var ed = doc.Editor;

      var db = doc.Database;

 

      try

      {

        // Ask the user to select a block or None for "all"

 

        var peo =

          new PromptEntityOptions("\nSelect block to fix <all>");

        peo.SetRejectMessage("Must be a block.");

        peo.AddAllowedClass(typeof(BlockReference), false);

        peo.AllowNone = true;

 

        var per = ed.GetEntity(peo);

 

        if (

          per.Status != PromptStatus.OK &&

          per.Status != PromptStatus.None

        )

          return;

 

        // If the user hit enter, run on all blocks in the drawing

 

        bool allBlocks = per.Status == PromptStatus.None;

 

        using (var tr = db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction())

        {

          var toProcess = new ObjectIdCollection();

          if (allBlocks)

          {

            var bt =

              (BlockTable)tr.GetObject(

                db.BlockTableId, OpenMode.ForRead

              );

 

            // Collect all the non-layout blocks in the drawing

 

            foreach (ObjectId btrId in bt)

            {

              var btr =

                (BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(

                  btrId, OpenMode.ForRead

                );

              if (!btr.IsLayout)

              {

                toProcess.Add(btrId);

              }

            }

          }

          else

          {

            // A specific block was selected, let's open it

 

            var brId = per.ObjectId;

            var br =

              (BlockReference)tr.GetObject(brId, OpenMode.ForRead);

 

            // Collect the ID of its underlying block definition

 

            toProcess.Add(br.BlockTableRecord);

          }

 

          var brIds = MoveWipeoutsToBottom(tr, toProcess);

          var count = toProcess.Count;

 

          // Open each of the returned block references and

          // request that they be redrawn

 

          foreach (ObjectId brId in brIds)

          {

            var br =

              (BlockReference)tr.GetObject(brId, OpenMode.ForWrite);

 

            // We want to redraw a specific block, so let's modify a

            // property on the selected block reference

 

            // We might also have called this method:

            // br.RecordGraphicsModified(true);

            // but setting a property works better with undo

 

            br.Visible = br.Visible;

          }

 

          // Report the number of blocks modified (after

          // being filtered by MoveWipeoutsToBottom())

 

          ed.WriteMessage(

            "\nModified {0} block definition{1}.",

            count, count == 1 ? "" : "s"

          );

 

          // Commit the transaction

 

          tr.Commit();

        }

      }

      catch (Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime.Exception e)

      {

        doc.Editor.WriteMessage(

        "\nException: {0}", e.Message

        );

      }

    }

 

    // Move the wipeouts to the bottom of the specified

    // block definitions

 

    private static ObjectIdCollection MoveWipeoutsToBottom(

      Transaction tr, ObjectIdCollection ids

    )

    {

      // The IDs of any block references we find

      // to return to the call for updating

 

      var brIds = new ObjectIdCollection();

 

      // We only need to get this once

 

      var wc = RXClass.GetClass(typeof(Wipeout));

 

      // Take a copy of the IDs passed in, as we'll modify the

      // original list for the caller to use

 

      var btrIds = new ObjectId[ids.Count];

      ids.CopyTo(btrIds, 0);

 

      // Loop through the blocks passed in, opening each one

 

      foreach (var btrId in btrIds)

      {

        var btr =

          (BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(

            btrId, OpenMode.ForWrite

          );

 

        // Collect the wipeouts in the block

 

        var wipeouts = new ObjectIdCollection();

        foreach (ObjectId id in btr)

        {

          var ent = (Entity)tr.GetObject(id, OpenMode.ForRead);

          if (ent.GetRXClass().IsDerivedFrom(wc))

          {

            wipeouts.Add(id);

          }

        }

 

        // Move the collected wipeouts to the bottom

 

        if (wipeouts.Count > 0)

        {

          // Modify the draw order table, if we have wipepouts

 

          var dot =

            (DrawOrderTable)tr.GetObject(

              btr.DrawOrderTableId, OpenMode.ForWrite

            );

          dot.MoveToBottom(wipeouts);

 

          // Collect the block references to this block, to pass

          // back to the calling function for updating

 

          var btrBrIds = btr.GetBlockReferenceIds(false, false);

          foreach (ObjectId btrBrId in btrBrIds)

          {

            brIds.Add(btrBrId);

          }

        }

        else

        {

          ids.Remove(btrId);

        }

      }

      return brIds;

    }

  }

}

The code is a bit longer than I had originally expected as I decided that, rather than relying on Editor.Regen() to reflect the changes to the drawing, it would be cleaner to modify each block reference in turn in order to force their graphics to be refreshed.

We’re not actually making a change to each block reference, but it’s not enough to just open them for write. The classic approach, here, would be to call RecordGraphicsModified(true) on each object, but I’ve actually found that making a property modification (even if to the same value) leads to undo working better – it forces a redraw even on undo. So I’ve chosen to set the Visible property of each block reference to the current value of the Visible property – I’m sure you’ll agree that’s as innocuous a modification as you can get. :-)

The function that checks each block for wipeouts and then modifies the draw order now collects the block references to these blocks and returns them to the caller. It’s clear that calling Regen() would have been simpler (i.e. taking fewer lines of code), but it would have exhibited similar behaviour to calling RecordGraphicsModified() with respect to undo. So while it takes more code, this approach is ultimately cleaner and works better, too.

Dustin has tried the application and tells me it works well for him – and it works well on the drawings Dustin provided for me to test with – but, beyond that, as I don’t personally use SmartSketch I have to take his word for it. If any other SmartSketch users who’ve hit this particular problem are able to give this a test, it’d be great to get some feedback in the comments.

Autodesk ReCap Photo

You’re hopefully by now familiar with 123D Catch – a technology I’ve talked about before, a consumer-focused tool for reconstructing 3D models from photos – but Autodesk is also providing a professional-grade version of the system on Autodesk 360 called Autodesk ReCap Photo.

To get access to the trial version of this tool, simply log in to Autodesk 360 and upload some photos of the scene you’d like to capture. You can then multi-select the photos, right-click and select “Create 3D model”. You’ll be presented with the “photo-to-3D settings” window that allows you to enter the name for the project and select options such as the quality of the output and the target formats (.RCS, .OBJ, .FBX and/or .IPM). You can also enable the “advanced settings” toggle to be able to register reference points/distances to generate a scale model as well as to specify which photos should be used for texture generation.

For more detailed information on using ReCap Photo – as well as some sample projects – see this page. You might also want to check out the forum for ReCap Photo (and for ReCap Studio) to ask any questions you might have or just see what others are saying.

Here’s a video on taking the right pictures for use with ReCap Photo, which is comparable to advice we’ve given for 123D Catch (and the Photo Scene Editor, before it).

Another nostalgic aside (these seem to be happening a lot, lately – hitting 40 has no doubt triggered them): the voiceover in the above video makes me think of “our Graham”, the person doing the voice-over from the classic UK game show Blind Date. To see what I mean, check this YouTube video of a special Comic Relief episode featuring Mr. Bean (and the actor who now plays Eli Gould in The Good Wife – wow, he’s a Scot!).

Here’s a voiceover-less video of a 3D model of the “launch cake”, captured (of course) using ReCap Photo:

Incidentally, if you’re an ADN member who’s interested in working with this technology, check your inbox for a recent DevNews on the topic. If you can’t find it, feel free to drop me an email.