VBA: pattern informations

Hi Jacqueline,

Unknown said:

How do I get pattern informations of a pattern placed with "associative pattern" and "associative region boundary" with VBA?

There are no such methods / properties in MicroStation VBA available, but you can use PropertyHandler to access parameters availables in Element Information dialog.

If Associative Region Boundary switch is on, a result of patterning is Associative Region, which is impemented as a cell element. So the whole process is to find a proper cell, create property handler and to access values using their Access Strings.

Simple example:

Option Explicit

Public Sub GetPatternParams()

    Dim regionBoundary As CellElement
    Set regionBoundary = ActiveModelReference.GetElementByID(DLongFromLong(10892))
    
    Dim ph As PropertyHandler
    Set ph = CreatePropertyHandler(regionBoundary)
    
    ph.SelectByAccessString ("HatchAngle")
    Dim patternAngle As Double
    patternAngle = ph.GetValue * 180 / Pi
    
    MsgBox "Pattern angle: " & patternAngle

End Sub

With regards,

 Jan

Hi Jacqueline,

Unknown said:

How do I get pattern informations of a pattern placed with "associative pattern" and "associative region boundary" with VBA?

There are no such methods / properties in MicroStation VBA available, but you can use PropertyHandler to access parameters availables in Element Information dialog.

If Associative Region Boundary switch is on, a result of patterning is Associative Region, which is impemented as a cell element. So the whole process is to find a proper cell, create property handler and to access values using their Access Strings.

Simple example:

Option Explicit

Public Sub GetPatternParams()

    Dim regionBoundary As CellElement
    Set regionBoundary = ActiveModelReference.GetElementByID(DLongFromLong(10892))
    
    Dim ph As PropertyHandler
    Set ph = CreatePropertyHandler(regionBoundary)
    
    ph.SelectByAccessString ("HatchAngle")
    Dim patternAngle As Double
    patternAngle = ph.GetValue * 180 / Pi
    
    MsgBox "Pattern angle: " & patternAngle

End Sub

With regards,

 Jan

Hi Jan,

thanks, this helps me a lot!

Regards, Jacqueline

Hi Jan,

i have another question:
How can I get the hatch-spacing?

Regards, Jacqueline

I guess it's "HatchSpace", but I recommend to use GetAccessStrings and to study the list of all available access strings.

Dim accessString() As String
accessString = ph.GetAccessStrings

With regards,

  Jan

I guessed the same, but it doesn't work?

If oPH.SelectByAccessString("HatchSpace") Then
    spc = oPH.GetValue
End If

Unknown said:

but it doesn't work?

What does it mean "it doen't work"? Is there any error message or what are symptoms?

Does the access string exist? What variable type is spc?

With regards,

  Jan

oPH.SelectByAccessString("HatchSpace") is false so I can't get the value - but oPH.GetAccessStrings includes the "HatchSpace".

spc is type double.

Regards, Jacqueline

Unknown said:

oPH.SelectByAccessString("HatchSpace") is false

So it means it does not exist ... and you probably dicovered a bug in MicroStation, because the access string exists in the list but cannot be used.

The true is that spacing is not displayed in Element Information dialog also, so maybe this access to hatching is not implemented in V8i (but is enhanced in CONNECT Edition). In such case I am afraid the only way is to use MDL (or at least VBA wrappers for MDL functions). But often it's not simple way.

Unknown said:

spc is type double.

Interesting is that spc is also VBA function. Isn't there naming conflict?

Regards,

  Jan

Hi Jan,

can you tell me how to use MDL to get the hatch-space?

I used the variable "spc" for your code, in my code its named "abstand" (german).

Regards, Jacqueline

Hi Jacqueline,

Unknown said:

can you tell me how to use MDL to get the hatch-space?

unfortunately it's not easy. You have to use a proper MDL function (MDL documentation delivered with MicroStation SDK is needed) and to find a right one (I guess it would be probably mdlPattern_extractAssociative). What I am not sure about is that this function fills PatterParams structure and VBA code has to mimics this structure properly. I am worry it would be time consuming task to investigate the right code and test it.

As an alternative, maybe C-expression access to TCB can be used. In TCB (Terminal Control Block, see e.g. this Jon's article)  active settings are stored including active pattern parameters. So to obtain pattern spacing value, a workflow identify pattern element > match parameters > check active parameters would work.

With regards,

  Jan