Exporting PIO as symbol

[Jayme McColgan]

I know it's possible to create a symbol of a PIO from the menus but you think it's possible to have a button in the OIP of a point object that will export itself as a symbol into the current drawing using the "Covert to plug-in object" option.

 

I tried calling vs.SymbolToGroup() but that just replaces the whole PIO as a group and doesn't save it to the resource browser. 

[Pat Stanford]

I have no idea if you can make this work or not, but as Vlado told me once:

 

Quote

"What you are trying to do sounds fancy, and as such it sounds like it won't work.”

Vlado Stanev, VW SDK List Dec. 4, 2015

 

What end result are you trying to achieve and why?  Perhaps we can offer a better alternative.

[Jayme McColgan]

1 hour ago, Pat Stanford said:

I have no idea if you can make this work or not, but as Vlado told me once:

 

 

What end result are you trying to achieve and why?  Perhaps we can offer a better alternative.

 

hahaha. 

 

my Point object plugin uses parameters in the OIP to create a 3d object. I want the user to be able to save that as a symbol so it can be used in the future without having to recreate it. I know you can manually do this with the "Create Symbol" menu command and having "Convert to plug-in object" selected. I'd like to make it easier for the user by making that a button in the OIP.

 

vs.DoMenuTextByName("Create Symbol", 0) is a workaround but doesn't select "Convert to plug-in object". 

 

both vs.DoMenuTextByName("Symbol to Group", 0) and vs.DoMenuTextByName("Shallow Symbol to Group", 0)  return an error that those menu commands don't exist

[Jesse Cogswell]

You can absolutely do this.  The key here is to create an "empty" symbol (I usually use a 2D locus with a handle so I can delete it later), then use CreateDuplicateObject to duplicate the target PIO into the symbol container.  Then you just need to set the Insert As Group object variable for the symbol.

 

Below is a super simple way to do this in Vectorscript, you'll have to adapt it for Python.  It will detect whether the selected object is a PIO, then ask a name for the symbol.  If the symbol name doesn't conflict with an existing named object, the script will create a symbol in the Resource Manager root (you can add code of your own to determine placement), duplicate the PIO, delete the locus, and flip the Insert As Group flag.  Easy-peasy.

 

PROCEDURE ExportPIO;

CONST

	kPIO = 86;
	kInsertAsGroup = 127;

VAR

	h,pioHd,tempHd:HANDLE;
	symbolName:STRING;
	pt:POINT;

BEGIN
	IF(GetTypeN(FSActLayer) = kPIO) THEN pioHd:=FSActLayer;
	
	IF(pioHD <> NIL) THEN
		BEGIN
			symbolName:=StrDialog('Enter symbol name','');
			IF ((NOT DidCancel) & (GetObject(symbolName) = NIL)) THEN
				BEGIN
					GetSymLoc(pioHd,pt.x,pt.y);
					
					BeginSym(symbolName);
						Locus(0,0);
						tempHd:=LNewObj;
					EndSym;
					
					h:=CreateDuplicateObject(pioHd,GetObject(symbolName));
					HMove(h,0 - pt.x,0 - pt.y);
			
					DelObject(tempHd);
			
					SetObjectVariableBoolean(GetObject(symbolName),kInsertAsGroup,TRUE);
				END;
		END;
END;

Run(ExportPIO);

 

[Jayme McColgan]

Here's the Python Version of this for future people. I added some error checking to make sure that symbol name doesn't already exist.

 

Pcontinue = True

### get symbols in current cad
cur_symbols = []
MyList, NumItems = vs.BuildResourceList(16, 0, '')
for i in range(NumItems):
  MyName = vs.GetNameFromResourceList(MyList, i+1)
  cur_symbols.append(MyName)

### Pull Case Name
case_name = str(vs.GetRField(PIO_handle, recname, "Case Name"))

### If not case Name define one
if not case_name:
  case_name = vs.StrDialog('Enter Case name','')
  if vs.DidCancel() or not case_name:
    Pcontinue = False

if Pcontinue:
  ### Check for unique name
  test = 1
  main_name = case_name
  while case_name in cur_symbols:
    case_name = f"{main_name}-{test}"
    test += 1
    
  x,y = vs.GetSymLoc(PIO_handle)

  vs.BeginSym(case_name)
  vs.Locus(0,0)
  tempHd =vs.LNewObj()
  vs.EndSym()

  h = vs.CreateDuplicateObject(PIO_handle,vs.GetObject(case_name))
  vs.HMove(h,-x,-y)
  vs.DelObject(tempHd)
  vs.SetObjectVariableBoolean(vs.GetObject(case_name),127,True)