Point Attributes/Notes

The original point block - as far as I know- was created by DCA, which was bought by Softdesk, which was bought by Autodesk, as I recall. It had a point entity and 3 attributes, one each for elevation, point number and description. The attribute order was important.

Autodesk had since superseded that block with a more flexible (and more proprietary) entity, but a lot of software still looks for that original block configuration. If you create a custom point block that incorporates additional data, you may not be able to use them with applications that expect a DCA point block.

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't do it, I'm just noting that doing so may have un expected consequences.

Not sure if this helps.
http://docs.autodesk.com/CIV3D/2013/ENU/index.html?url=filesCUG/GUID-3E88B795-F2E0-40E8-9F51-E628C3294B93.htm,topicNumber=CUGd30e54474

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I wrote a LISP that would read an PNEZD comma delimited ascii point list and populate a drawing with point blocks. A point block is simply a block with 3 attributes. It would have been no big trick to define a block with as many attributes as you care to have, and no big feat of programming to loop that function as many times as necessary. That would give you something to look at. But it wouldn't be a "smart" object.

And, alas, its been over a decade since I last LISP'd. Somebody like Terry Dotson might be able to customize something for you. But he does that for food, and winter is coming.

One of the arguments for Civil 3d. User Defined Properties (UDP's) and custom point file formats allow for exactly the functionality that you are looking for.

Using C3D, you can create a point label style that represents exactly what you're looking for. The rub is that each attribute won't be it's "own block", it will be a portion of the label as a whole. In short, if you move the point number away from the marker, the entire label will go with the point number. Hope this helps.

If I'm reading this right you're trying to get an INSERT with the "N" fields as separate ATTRIBs? The number of ATTDEFs in a BLOCK definition are baked into the BLOCK definition, but provided that the BLOCK definition has the "ATTRIBs follow" flag set, you can ENTMAKE an INSERT with as many or as few ATTRIBs as you like. Not all the INSERTs of a particular BLOCK have to have the same number of ATTRIBs, either. So if you had two lines in the input file that read

1205,450124.2531,1276254.4401,23.5647,sanitary manhole,rim elev 23.5647,n inv 18.52,e inv 18.47, s inv 18.31
1206,450337.4100,1276261.3881,25.1428,sanitary manhole,rim elev 25.1428,w inv 19.35

you could have it place an INSERT named "POINT" at point 1205 with one ATTRIB called "POINT" for point number, one ATTRIB called "ELEV" for the elevation value, and four ATTRIBs, all called "DESC" with the four notes from the first line. all stacked vertically, and another "POINT" INSERT at point 1206 with one "POINT", one "ELEV", and two "DESC" ATTRIBs. If that's what you want I'm sure I could crank something like that out.

arctan(x), post: 389880, member: 6795 wrote: I have a CSV (P,Y,X,D,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N,N)
Is there any lisp routine, or software that will take each entry and make it it's own point block?
The Carlson method puts the notes in a text object. However, we want something that is tied to the point block.

You can put it as an Attribute Block in Carlson also instead of a text object.

Tomorrow post some pics and a video from what the guys at Carlson sent to me. Talk about terrific support. Now I've got a point Block that can handle both the gis attributes and notes that I collect using survce and the attributes I export out of the trimble data collector.

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