A colleague asked me the other day if we can have multi-line iProperties. As far as I know there is only one multi-line iPropertie which is "Comments" on the "Summary" tab. I have been using Comments to add long texts like specs and description of an electric motor, or adding revision notes. He wanted to control the text on the "Project" and force the line return for better visibility in the title block.
The quick solution I've provided was to enter his project text in the comments box where he could control each line with enter and then put a formula in the project box calling the comments like this: =<Comments>.
But then it got me thinking on how else can this be done because it seems the text on all iProperties can be a multi-line one and it's the iProperties window that is's picking up just the last line of text. I didn't wanted to lock Comments and Project with same value so I needed a different solution.
So if you can force the value in a different way it will support multi-line.
First thought was to have 3 parameters for each line of text that he wanted and then have a form called project where he can enter the text on each parameter (each line). Then use iLogic to send all three parameters to Project value like this:
Notice the & vblf & that sends a line feed (enter) command after each line.
This seem complicated having all this parameter and iLogic embedded in the template especially since it's very rare that we need this. Then I've thought that this can be done with just an iLogic rule that can be called and run when needed. Something like this:
---------this was not working, because it didn't retain the ln values ------ ln1 = InputBox("Enter first line", "Project iLogic ln1", ln1) ln2 = InputBox("Enter second line", "Project iLogic ln2", ln2) ln3 = InputBox("Enter third line", "Project iLogic ln3", ln3) iProperties.Value("Project", "Project") = ln1 & vbLf & ln2 & vbLf & ln3 InventorVb.DocumentUpdate()
---------this was not working, because it didn't retain the ln values ------
So we need to add custom properties that can hold the text value of each line like this:
The good thing is that you can have this as an external rule available for everybody instead of embedded in the document.
First time you run the code it will have an empty string, after that it will show the existing value in case you only need to do a small change like typing correction or changing case to upper.
After a couple of searches it seems that Autodesk is aware of this limitation and they are working on fixing it.
Decided to force a video every time, no matter how hard or tiring it might be so here it is:
Using CAD all day I had to get a
proper mouse, with the right ergonomics and components to make it last and make
it fun again.
Did a
little survey on gaming mouse and found out that I am a palm user (mouse grip
wise) so I decided to get the Kone XTD. I had to disabled all LED’s and made it
as common as possible for office work.
The
nice thing about it is that it has two thumb buttons that I have customized as
Enter and Escape, my two commands I use mainly on the keyboard. You can make
your own macros stored in the mouse that will work on any other computer.
The
other day I was looking over the stat’s page and realized that I am doing
around 5500 clicks, 4000 scrolls and about 30 m travel (on max speed) EVERY DAY.
In 1.5 months I have done 300k clicks, 200k scrolls, and around 1700 m (on max speed).
Fortunately it’s still holding
strong and I hope to have it for a long time. I was looking to get the Logitech
MX but it has an infinite scroll meaning that the wheel will spin without control
at the smallest touch and you don’t want that in AutoCAD or Inventor for that
matter.
