Creating an AutoCAD table using .NET

June 06, 2007

Creating an AutoCAD table using .NET

This suggestion came in a few weeks ago from Kélcyo Pereira, and I've borrowed some code from Sreekar Devatha, from DevTech India, to help implement the suggestion.

The following C# code creates a very simple table and inserts it at the position selected by the user. The table is really very simply - a 5 (row) x 3 (column) table created from string values, no other data-types. It picks up the current style and aligns each cell as "middle, center". That's really all there is to it.

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Geometry;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;

namespace TableCreation
{
  public class Commands
  {
    [CommandMethod("CRT")]
    static public void CreateTable()
    {
      Document doc =
        Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;
      Database db = doc.Database;
      Editor ed = doc.Editor;

      PromptPointResult pr =
        ed.GetPoint("\nEnter table insertion point: ");
      if (pr.Status == PromptStatus.OK)
      {
        Table tb = new Table();
        tb.TableStyle = db.Tablestyle;
        tb.NumRows = 5;
        tb.NumColumns = 3;
        tb.SetRowHeight(3);
        tb.SetColumnWidth(15);
        tb.Position = pr.Value;

        // Create a 2-dimensional array
        // of our table contents
        string[,] str = new string[5, 3];
        str[0, 0] = "Part No.";
        str[0, 1] = "Name ";
        str[0, 2] = "Material ";
        str[1, 0] = "1876-1";
        str[1, 1] = "Flange";
        str[1, 2] = "Perspex";
        str[2, 0] = "0985-4";
        str[2, 1] = "Bolt";
        str[2, 2] = "Steel";
        str[3, 0] = "3476-K";
        str[3, 1] = "Tile";
        str[3, 2] = "Ceramic";
        str[4, 0] = "8734-3";
        str[4, 1] = "Kean";
        str[4, 2] = "Mostly water";

        // Use a nested loop to add and format each cell
        for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        {
          for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
          {
            tb.SetTextHeight(i, j, 1);
            tb.SetTextString(i, j, str[i, j]);
            tb.SetAlignment(i, j, CellAlignment.MiddleCenter);
          }
        }
        tb.GenerateLayout();

        Transaction tr =
          doc.TransactionManager.StartTransaction();
        using (tr)
        {
          BlockTable bt =
            (BlockTable)tr.GetObject(
              doc.Database.BlockTableId,
              OpenMode.ForRead
            );
          BlockTableRecord btr =
            (BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(
              bt[BlockTableRecord.ModelSpace],
              OpenMode.ForWrite
            );
          btr.AppendEntity(tb);
          tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(tb, true);
          tr.Commit();
        }
      }
    }
  }
}