Autocad Drawing Properties Command

[Leonides Suttle]

Nothe drawing properties inside of your drawing. In your title block. Project manager>(maximize active project) right click on active project>properties>drawing properties. I found that if I type in ACED it will come up ACED being short for ACEDRAWINGPROPS.

Hello Autodesk Community,

In my group we use the Drawing Custom Properties to populate variables to some blocks (Drawing Utilityies -> Drawing Properties -> Custom). What I would love to do is have either a VBA script create or in powershell/command prompt pipe one of these custom properties (say "checkedBy") to a text file that would be named and saved to match the name of the dwg. Ideally this script would be useable by someone running just AutoCAD LT 2015.

I can see the variable in windows explorer, there, taunting me. But everything I've tried on my own or googled hasn't worked.Any help would be appreicated. I've never used Autocad LISP before or tried to use VBA to call on Autocad so any direction on a good place to learn/start would also be appreciated.

We are using DWGPROPS and my machine has the full version.

I can see it from outside autocad in windows explorer as a custom property. My question is, how do you get those custom properties using a script? I tried powershell and all I can get is the information in the "statistics" and "general" tabs you would get if you clicked on a file's properties in windows explorer.

Windows explorer can access the fields I want and display it in the file's properties (custom tab) regardless of the machine having a full version or the LT version. Surely there must be a way to access this information outside of AutoCAD if a computer with LT can see this information in windows explorer. I've noticed that the computer must at least have LT in order to see that custom tab in the file's properties in windows explorer.

Maybe someone can point me to .dll I need to use in a vba script. Else how can windows explorer access this information without an instance of AutoCAD (LT or full installed on the machine) being started?

Your drawing layouts use a block that presumably needs to show this sheet number. Unfortunately, that block isn't set up to show that dwgprops information, you would need to add a field either directly to your block or within an attribute, your title block now just contains a plain text item?

There is no link the 4 in your title is just plain text in an attribute, maybe at some point you had a field in there but looks like maybe someone edited the block because it isn't in the block definition either.

Open the block in block editor. Double click on the attribute and then where the "4" is delete the 4 and then right-click and choose 'field', from the list on the left hand side go all the way to the bottom to find the dwgprop total-sht. Now save the block and in your drawing run attsync and select the title block to update the information, (possibly you might need to reinsert the title block). Then when you make the change in your dwgprops you will need to do a regen.

No don't delete the attribute, double-click on the attribute and delete just the number 4 that is in the attribute default, then right-click in that default box and select insert field, it is here that you place the field value you have found.

Works just fine here. Did you save the changes to the block and did you run the attsync command after making the changes, once you have done that then you should see a slight greyish background color around the number (this indicates that the text is now a field). When you make changes to the dwgprops you will need to run the 'regen' command in order for the fields to update in the title block. See the attached.

And then I simply pushing "Enter". After that I am saving the Block Changes (by the way, Block Test is not working). So, I am testing my changes outside of the block editor, but the "Field" is still not inserted.

Have you run the 'attsync' command, any existing blocks don't automatically update you have to run attsync and select one of the existing blocks, this causes the block to recognise that you have changed an attribute setting in the block editor. Plus after you make changes to the dwgprops you need to run regen.

Yes, I did. That is useful command for updating all other attributes, however the "Field" function still doesn't work inside Block Editor. That is not very important, I fixed everting from outside of Block Editor.

Still need to figure out how to where to find Sheet number:

By drawing properties I am referring to when you select the File menu and choose Drawing Properties. I see that is uses the command _dwgprops and now I'd like to find information on how to populate the fields like "Author" "Keywords" as well as to create and populate some custom fields.

I hate to update my own posts but it's been another one of those frustrating days or searching and finding BS answers, empty answers, no answers, answers that don't work or don't include all the needed info...and all from some *&^% who thinks the whole world should know as much about the question as they do.

Anyway, AfraLISP had a promising block of code...but it too would not work reporting back error after error...Wrong DXF code, etc.. But I did at least find this so for those who'd like at least something to get started with this topic:

It is a long time since I last looked at this code. I was using it to prove we could speed up production of some similar produces but apparently it was too difficult to do it my way. Far better to throw people at the task.

Not sure if your aware of this or not but once you create drawing properties inside autocad as a custom field that information is also exposed in the drawing properties via windows, simply right-click the drawing-select properties and go to the tab called custom. All the fields will be listed there that are in the drawing. You can change them from there without ever opening the drawing, in fact anyone could at that point.

Rick Jackson

Survey CAD Technician VI

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How would you change these properties without opening the drawings? When I go to properties through Windows these options are greyed out. As it happens this is what I would expect as I would not want someone clicking on properties and changing things through Windows without knowing what was actually in the drawing. If there is a way to change these properties without opening the drawings then maybe I need to stop inserting drawing information in drawing properties as potentially it could be changed and be meaningless.

Let me restructure the question again. What I would like to do is to change the field in the 'Drawing Properties' such as 'Location Code'. But to open drawing properties for each drawing in the same project one at a time is a painful process. Is there a way I could modify these fields all at once for the drawings in a same project?

For instance: if you have a dwg file with the properties information you like (i.e. LOCATION CODE = xxxx), you can open that file and run the propulate command. Choose the "Edit" option. A main window will open.

Then, you have to save the .prp file in a location you prefer and name it in a recognizible way (something like "Location.code.prp", suppose). Right after that you have to set this setting as your template: under the Template menu, click on "Make active template".

Now, if you want to set the properties saved in the .prp file on a bunch of dwg's, you have to set the Update option at the command line, then set the "other drawings" option, and finally digit the path of the drawings you want to update. Make sure to write it complete of "*.dwg".

If you do not have a drawing containg the custom properties you like, you can start from scratch , which is quite the same thing: the difference is that you have to set manually the custom properties in the custom tab of the main window.

I have created a template with a titleblock and I added a series of custom properties with DWGPROP > CUSTOM panel (I added Items such as Forma, scale, date, project name, etc...) which I can change using sheet manager.

Copy: Copies the DwgProps content to the clipboard for pasting into other open drawings.

Paste: Pastes selected DwgProps fields from copied content to the current drawing.

Set: Sets specified drawing properties information in multiple selected drawings. A lookup table (copied from a spreadsheet) can be used to supply unique values for each drawing!

If you have a multiple-layout drawing and want only one layout per drawing this is the app for you. JTB LayoutsToDwgs will save each of your layouts to a single-layout drawings. Model space is copied as is.

You will be asked to use WBLOCK or SAVEAS command to proceed. Use SAVEAS command to keep the current drawing properties, page setups and other settings in the new drawing(s). Use WBLOCK command for better performance.

This is from the description: Page Setups and custom DWG properties (DWGPROPS command) are deleted by Autodesk AutoCAD in the process as the WBLOCK command is being used in the app. If there is a need to keep Page Setups and/or custom drawing properties contact us for a special version.

Propulate allows quick, automated population of the Drawing Properties dialog data fields. This data is seen when using the DWGPROPS command or when viewing the properties of a .DWG file though the Windows Explorer, outside of AutoCAD. Drawing Property data can be updated, listed or removed from the current drawing or a subdirectory of drawings.

Using a predefined template, PROPULATE can fill in Drawing Properties data in entire directories of drawings. The information that can be applied includes literal strings, attribute values extracted from specified attributed blocks and lists of attached xrefs, images and fonts. Example: You have a whole project directory full of drawings that use the same attributed title block. Using PROPULATE and a customized template you can have the attribute values from each title block in each drawing extracted and added to that drawing's Drawing Properties dialog. PROPULATE can also insert (into the comment field) a list of the xrefs, images and fonts used by each drawing.

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