Civil 3D Toolkit - Request for Define Block Node - Discussion

Civil3D
1

New thread created to continue discussion from the following post:
https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/civil-3d-toolkit-feedback-thread/43570/164

Paolo

My dynamo script builds gantry bases and pile caps along a road. The user specifies in a spreadsheet the chainage to put the base at, the offset distance from the edge of carriageway string, and then specifies the size of the pile cap itself, plus the location and dimensions of the 4 piles

gantry_base_excel
gantry_base_excel1360×163 7.86 KB
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My output at the moment means I am getting 5 separate objects appear within Civil3D for each of the gantry bases

gantry_base_CAD
gantry_base_CAD1359×693 66.5 KB
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What I would like is for Dynamo to be able to turn those 5 items into a block, similar to selecting those 5 items within Civil3D and typing in BLOCK to turn those objects into a block.
Ideally I would also be able to add attributes to that block as well. That would allow me to add information to the block such as the gantry name (eg G500 from the screenshot above) plus setting out points for the pile cap and piles.

My thoughts are to have a node which allows the user to create a new block definition within the current drawing, by providing the node with a block name, list of geometry objects, and the basepoint.
For my particular situation, I would prefer that list of geometry to be Dynamo geometry objects, but you might need/want a version that provides a list of objects that are already within the DWG file

2

Thanks John, the object will have to be converted into AutoCAD objects even if they were originated in Dynamo. The limitation here is that there is no dynamic tie between a solid and the Dynamo node that generated the correspondent AutoCAD solid (the implementation of the node is different from what I’ve done in CivilConnection).

3

That would still work for me. I have the “AutoCAD” objects as an output from the Object.ByGeometry node, so I can just feed that into any “Define Block” node.

gantry_base_dynamoCADObject
gantry_base_dynamoCADObject1003×672 46.4 KB

I assume the node would work similar to the “BLOCK” command in that the solids would now only exist inside the block. What I don’t want is to end up with the block containing the 5 solids, plus the 5 solids on their own.

What we would need to make sure of is if a block is already defined in the DWG file which has the same name (which it will if you have run the Dynamo script before), the node would overwrite the definition of the block.

4

Hi! I’m looking for the same node as you are describing here, has there been any progress on this?