Motor Tool & Automatic Ordinate Dimensioning

[LSWHEELDON]

Hi all,

This may be wishful thinking but.... How can I attach automatic ordinate dimensioning to a symbol? In other words, just like the motor tool in spotlight, I'd like to place a symbol in the document and have the x & y coordinates automatically display in the symbol classes which could be made visible, or not. And, the origin would be another custom symbol which I could place anywhere in the document. Is there a way to do accomplish this when building the symbol? How did they do this accomplish this with the motor tool in spotlight?

[Sam Jones]

This is not possible with a symbol.  The hoists are plug-in objects, PIOs.  A symbol does not know where it is.  When it is moved, it does not know that it has moved.  PIOs are smart and they run a little program every time something happens to them.  It is possible to build a PIO using vectorscript, but it would be a unique kind of object, and you would not be able to build other symbols that automatically incorporate the little program.  You could build other objects that use the same vectorscript code to display their own location.  You need to be deep into vectorscript or marionette to build PIOs.  Not rocket science, but also not a set of 3 or 4 rules you can throw at any symbol you create.

 

HTH,

Sam