DrawingXpert is a highly automated and highly
flexible Tool for modifying the content of SmartSketch drawings based on
various rules. The tool can process either single drawings or folders
and sub-folders. The tool is able to run interactively or command line
mode. Microsoft Windows 7 or later Microsoft Excel 2003 or higher Intergraph SmartSketch 2014 R1 or higher DrawingXpert has different sections for Input,
Configuration, Coordinate Shift and Output. All settings made on UI (like the path to the Excel config file,
input, output folders) are saved in a settings.ini which is by default
saved in: This file contains a set of rules for the modification on a
drawing. With “Export text to Excel” all texts from the selected drawings are
written to the tab in “Scan Result”. All text nodes are grouped by drawing: Both sheets have informal character. A change in that sheet has no
effect on the drawings. There is also a sheet for the linked documents referenced to the
drawing. DrawingXpert is able to read out these links and
store this information in ScanResultLinks-sheet: DrawingXpert is able to change also these links to
referenced documents. In that sheet you define the rules for the modifications on the
drawings. A detailed explanation and description how to use these regular
expression are available in the information tab: In the Find-column you define the rule WHAT string should be
found. All rules are executed top-down -> more than one rule can be
applied on the same text element. To change this behaviour “Stop flag”
can be set. If “Stop flag” is set to 1 for a particular rule which
matches some text element, no further rules are executed on the same
element. This prevents multiple replacements on the same text
element. Xmin (m), Ymin (m), Xmax (m), Ymax (m): This is the Coordinate-recognition tab. According these rules the coordinates are categorized in X+, X-, Y+,
Y-, Z+ and Z- category The coordinate are changed according the values that are defined in
section In that section you can define areas on the drawing that can be
cleared from their content. With that functionality you can “fill” your TitleBlock fields again
that you have deleted before with the new values. In the Title Block definition you define where these cells are placed
on the drawing together with the Font, Font size, Colour and
Typewrite. With that definition you are able to produce new entries on a
drawing.
Introduction
Prerequisites
General functions
and Graphic User Interface
When DrawingXpert is started a log file in the default
location %temp%/DrawingXpert is created.
This is the area where the input is defined. You can
select either single files or folders. | In case of a folder,
DrawingXpert also searches in all subfolders. Only
files with defined extension are processed. |
Location of the config-file where the rules for the modification in
the drawings are defined
Section where the “Movement” can be defined. Move means
that these are the relative distances for the Coordinate-labels on a
drawing. | DrawingXpert reads and calculates the new
values for the coordinate labels.
Output folder for the drawings after the modifications.
There are two options possible: | If the input-folder is the same as the
output-folder then the drawings are overwritten with the changes. By
defining a different output-folder the modified | drawings are saved to
this location. The source-files are kept unchanged. Anyway
DrawingXpert creates a Backup of all drawings that are
processed.
“Export text to Exce” button extracts all texts from SmartkSketch
and stores it in the Excel config-file, sheet “ScanResult” and
“ScanResultLink”. If Excel file doesn’t exist a new file is created
automatically, if the file already exists, existing sheets are extended
by new text. All extracted textes are exported only once per file (to
avoid duplicates).
“Replace in Drawings” starts the processing of the drawings (text
replacement and if enabled transformation to a new coordinates).
Settings
….user\AppData\Roaming\CAXperts\DrawingXpert\settings.ini.
This settings file can be saved to any other location and also load from
there by using these options:
Excel Configuration file
This file is delivered with the software and contains already some
predefined examples.
The default location for the Configuration is:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\CAXperts\DrawingXpert\Config\Config.xls"
From that location you should copy that into a project specific folder
in order to make the project specific adaptions.ScanResult
For the export of your textnodes you can either use your existing
config-file from
Or you can create a new Excel-Workbook just by defining a new
Excel-Workbook.
DrawingXpert creates this new workbook which just
contains the sheets “ScanResult” and
ScanResultLinks
The links are store in the Link-table in SmartSketch:
The change for the path to the reference file must be defined in the
“FindReplace” sheet.FindReplace
The rules are based on regular expressions.
In the Replace Column you define the replace-string.
Here you can define an area on the drawing where the rules are executed.
Only text elements within defined range will be processed.
With that you can easily define the area for the title-block or area for
the revisions.
This makes sure that the specific rules do not affect other parts of the
drawing where the rules may also fit for.Coordinate
Here you define how a coordinate-string can be distinguished from other
textnodes.
ChangeCoordinate
With this
you can obtain a coordinate change in the drawings.
In the ChangeCoordinate tab you define the behaviour what happens when a
coordinate changes from e.g. West (-X) to East (+X).
You even can change the complete meaning of the Coordinate
Prefix/Suffix.
With that a change from X -12000 to East +24000 is possible.ClearBlock
You also can define dedicated object-types with in combination with a
specific colour.
This functionality is very useful to empty complete revision blocks or
dedicated fields in a title block.
TitleBlock
Here you define the name of the single parts of a line for a
revision:
e.g.
TitleBlockDefinition
