First we saw some simple code to create a pretty multi-line text object, then we saw some code to place it using a “drag jig”, now we’re going to launch AutoCAD’s In-Place Editor (IPE) for MText once the object has been placed. To do this we’re going to make use of the InplaceTextEditor object added to the Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices namespace in AutoCAD 2011.
There’s very little work needed to do this – I had concerns about whether it could work safely with a newly-created, transaction-resident object, but it seems to work very well, as far as I can tell.
Here’s the updated C# code with the new/modified lines in red (you can also get the source file without line numbers here):
1 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;
2 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;
3 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;
4 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;
5 using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Geometry;
6
7 namespace MTextCreationAndEditing
8 {
9 public class Commands
10 {
11 [CommandMethod("COLTXT3")]
12 static public void CreateColouredMText()
13 {
14 Document doc =
15 Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;
16 Database db = doc.Database;
17 Editor ed = doc.Editor;
18
19 // Variables for our MText entity's identity
20 // and location
21
22 ObjectId mtId;
23 Point3d mtLoc = Point3d.Origin;
24
25 Transaction tr =
26 db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction();
27 using (tr)
28 {
29 // Create our new MText and set its properties
30
31 MText mt = new MText();
32 mt.Location = mtLoc;
33 mt.Contents =
34 "Some text in the default colour...\\P" +
35 "{\\C1;Something red}\\P" +
36 "{\\C2;Something yellow}\\P" +
37 "{\\C3;And} {\\C4;something} " +
38 "{\\C5;multi-}{\\C6;coloured}\\P";
39
40 // Open the block table, the model space and
41 // add our MText
42
43 BlockTable bt =
44 (BlockTable)tr.GetObject(
45 db.BlockTableId,
46 OpenMode.ForRead
47 );
48
49 BlockTableRecord ms =
50 (BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(
51 bt[BlockTableRecord.ModelSpace],
52 OpenMode.ForWrite
53 );
54
55 mtId = ms.AppendEntity(mt);
56 tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(mt, true);
57
58 // Select the last entity added (our MText)
59
60 PromptSelectionResult psr = ed.SelectLast();
61
62 // Assuming that worked, we'll drag it
63
64 if (psr.Status == PromptStatus.OK)
65 {
66 // Launch our drag jig
67
68 PromptPointResult ppr =
69 ed.Drag(
70 psr.Value,
71 "\nSelect text location: ",
72 delegate(Point3d pt, ref Matrix3d mat)
73 {
74 // If no change has been made, say so
75
76 if (mtLoc == pt)
77 return SamplerStatus.NoChange;
78 else
79 {
80 // Otherwise we return the displacement
81 // matrix for the current position
82
83 mat =
84 Matrix3d.Displacement(
85 mtLoc.GetVectorTo(pt)
86 );
87 }
88 return SamplerStatus.OK;
89 }
90 );
91
92 // Assuming it works, transform our MText
93 // appropriately
94
95 if (ppr.Status == PromptStatus.OK)
96 {
97 // Get the final translation matrix
98
99 Matrix3d mat =
100 Matrix3d.Displacement(
101 mtLoc.GetVectorTo(ppr.Value)
102 );
103
104 // Transform our MText
105
106 mt.TransformBy(mat);
107
108 // Launch the in-place MText editor
109 // with the default settings
110
111 InplaceTextEditor.Invoke(
112 mt,
113 new InplaceTextEditorSettings()
114 );
115
116 // Finally we commit our transaction
117
118 tr.Commit();
119 }
120 }
121 }
122 }
123 }
124 }
When we run our new COLTXT3 command, we can see the MText IPE gets invoked once we’ve placed our object:
We can then use it to “correct” spelling errors (such as my British use of “colour”, although for some reason the second instance, “coloured” doesn’t get a red squiggle):
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