Sometimes
we need to count the number of blocks that exist in our drawings. It turns out
that there are several approaches to doing this in ZWCAD. Let me share them with
you.
Approach
1: BCOUNT
Here
is how to use the BCOUNT command to count all or just a selected group of blocks
in drawings:
1.
Enter
the BCOUNT command.
2.
Select
the objects you want to count, and then press Enter.
3. Notice that the name
of each block and the number of its occurrences appear on
the command line. To see all of the details, press F2 to get to the Text window, a big version of the command prompt area.
It looks something like this:
As
a bonus, this method also reports the number of each kind of block in the
selection set.
Approach
2: BLOCKSUM
The
BLOCKSUM command does not count the total number of blocks; rather, it is used
to count how many blocks are on a specific layer, and how many have the same
name.
The
BLOCKSUM command can be accessed from ZWCAD Express menu: Express > Tools > Number of Blocks.
Follow
these steps to use the BLOCKSUM command:
1.
Enter
the BLOCKSUM command, or select it
from the Express menu.
2.
Notice
that it prompts you, ‘Layer/selection Set/<All>’. There are two choices, Layer,
or select a specific number of objects:
- Layer option counts the number of blocks on the same layer as the
selected block.
- selection
Set option counts the number of blocks that have the same name as the
selected block.
3.
When
you input L to choose the layer
option, it prompts you, ‘Select an object on the layer or <exit>:’. Select
a block, and then press Enter.
Notice that the
command line it reports, ‘[Number of] blocks on layer [layer name]’.
Approach
3: Attribute
Extraction
The BCOUNT
and BLOCKSUM commands are specifically meant for counting blocks. There is also
an indirect way to count them, through attribute extraction. The AttExt
command extracts all kinds of data from blocks, such as attribute values and X,Y
coordinates -- and it also extracts the number of blocks. The result is similar
to that of BlockSum, in that it lists the names of blocks and the number of
occurrences. See the figure below.
Approach
4: QSELECT
ZWCAD's
quick select feature is yet another indirect way to count blocks. Here is how
to use the QSELECT command for this task:
1.
Enter
the QSELECT command.
2.
In
the dialog box that appears, set the following options:
Object type=Block Reference
Color=Bylayer (We assume that all of the block’s colors are ByLayer.)
Color=Bylayer (We assume that all of the block’s colors are ByLayer.)
3.
Press
the OK button. Notice that all the
selected blocks are highlighted. The command line prompts us that there are X item(s)
selected, so we know how many blocks are in this drawing.
In
addition to these ways of counting blocks in drawings, we could use LISP programs,
but I think above four methods are enough for block counting. I'm glad to have
shared them with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment