Drawing View Scale Part I

Even in today's CAD world, we often include and display the drawing scale in the title block.  In the past, this was more of a requirement than it is today.  Today someone on the manufacturing floor can just as easily (and more accurately) pull up the CAD model on their terminal and take measurements. There are many students in my training classes that don't even know what item is shown in the image below.

Engineer's Scale

It is a typical practice for Inventor users to display the scale of the first view created in the drawing title block.

I recently ran into a situation where the client wanted two methods to pull a drawing scale to include in the title block:

1. Find the view name with the lowest numerical value and use its scale in the title block
2. Present the user with all drawing views, and their scales, on a drawing and allow the user to select which view he/she wanted to represent the scale in the title block

I'll discuss the first solution in this blog post.  The solution included just a few steps.

We cycled through each sheet on the drawing and looked at each view name.  If the view name begins with "VIEW" then it was used to build an one dimensional array.  This step ensured we didn't pull views such as section or detail views.

'    Cycle thru each sheet.  Build array of View Name and View Scale.    
     For Each oSheet In oSheets
     oViews = oSheet.DrawingViews
         For Each oView In oViews    
            oViewName = oView.Name
            If Left(oViewName,4) = "VIEW" Then
                temp = Right(oViewName,1)
                oViewList.Add(temp)
            End If
         Next
     Next

We then sorted the array and pulled the view scale of the first index of the array.

'    Sort array
     oViewList.Sort
    
'    Get scale of lowest View
     oSelectedScale = ActiveSheet.View("VIEW" & oViewList(0)).Scale

The view scale was pushed to a custom iProperty that was displayed in the drawing title block.

'    Set custom iProperty based on user selection
     iProperties.Value("Custom", "Scale") = RoundToFraction(oSelectedScale, 1/8, _

     RoundingMethod.Round) & ":1"

The full code is listed here:

'    Setting Variables
     Dim oDrawDoc As DrawingDocument = ThisDrawing.Document
     Dim oSheet As Sheet
     Dim oSheets As Sheets
     oSheets = oDrawDoc.Sheets
     Dim oView As DrawingView
     Dim oViews As DrawingViews
    
     Dim oScale As Double
     Dim oViewName As String
     Dim oViewList As New ArrayList
    
'    Cycle thru each sheet.  Build array of View Name and View Scale.    
     For Each oSheet In oSheets
     oViews = oSheet.DrawingViews
         For Each oView In oViews    
            oViewName = oView.Name
            If Left(oViewName,4) = "VIEW" Then
                temp = Right(oViewName,1)
                oViewList.Add(temp)
            End If
         Next
     Next
    
'    Sort array
     oViewList.Sort
    
'    Get scale of lowest View
     oSelectedScale = ActiveSheet.View("VIEW" & oViewList(0)).Scale

'    Set custom iProperty based on user selection
     iProperties.Value("Custom", "Scale") = RoundToFraction(oSelectedScale, 1/8, _
     RoundingMethod.Round) & ":1"
    
'    Update
     iLogicVb.UpdateWhenDone = True

Next post I'll discuss the second option where we displayed the view names and scales and allowed the user to select which scale to use in the title block.

As always, leave a comment and let us know how this has helped you.

Randy

"The difference between try and triumph is a little umph." - Unknown