Environment Variables

[Gonda]

Hi All,

So, when working with Python scripts, is there any way to access current states of things? Specifically, I'm working on a tool that will take multiple selected objects, read information from them, compute and then modify the objects. What I'm running into is that it seems that most functions want a handle to an object to do anything useful...I've found I can use a custom selection via criteria; however, I can't find a way to get from a selection based on criteria to object handles.

In a perfect world there would be some object or method (ie vs.CurrentSelection(). ) that would return either a single object handle or a list of multiple object handles...any thoughts and/or am I missing something obvious?

Thanks,

Jon Gonda

[klinzey]

Take a look at ForEachObject(). It uses criteria, to return the handles one by one in the callback function.

[Pat Stanford]

In Vectorscript one way would be to get a handle to the first object using FSActLayer and then step through the selected object using NextSObj. You are done when the handle from NextSObj returns NIL.

Be careful using these if your routines modify the objects enough that the handle list might change. This is especially important if you are deleting objects or changing their selection state. Sometimes you need to start at the end of the list and work backwards using PrevSObj.

[JBenghiat]

In addition to ForEachObject(), which steps through objects based on criteria, look at ForEachObjectInList() and ForEachObjectInLayer(), which can get the current selection.

One complication to parsing selected objects, if VW will hold the selection state of objects on inactive layers. You need to specify whether to include these objects or not.

If you're working on Python, you can easily use the FEO calls to load handles into a list and then iterate through the list. You can also use the FEO calls with lambda functions if your modification is simple.

-Josh