Plot To Window Extents Using VBA

By Madhukar Moogala

I have received  a query from an ADN partner  that customer code to plot to window doesn’t plot and gives an empty print on certain drawings and same code works well for rest of drawings.

The root cause of such weird behaviour is that the code doesn’t handle transformation of extent points from WCS to DCS, i.e. When user picks coordinate points from Editor as Window extents, these needs to transformed to DCS coordinate system for correct preview and plot of Drawings.

Important: Always make sure extents points needs to Transformed from WCS to DCS, this true for C++ & .NET API too.

 

VBA code:

Public Sub Example_SetWindowToPlot()

        ' This example allows the user to define an area in the current layout

        ' and displays a plot preview of the defined area.

 

        AppActivate ThisDrawing.Application.Caption

 

        Dim point1 As Object, point2 As Object

 

        ' Get first point in window

        point1 = ThisDrawing.Utility.GetPoint(, "Click the lower-left of the window to plot.")

 

        ' Get second point in window

        point2 = ThisDrawing.Utility.GetPoint(, "Click the upper-right of the window to plot.")

 

 

 

        Dim point1DCS As Object, point2DCS As Object

 

        'Translate coordinates from WCS to DCS

 

        point1DCS = ThisDrawing.Utility.TranslateCoordinates(point1, acWorld, acDisplayDCS, False)

        point2DCS = ThisDrawing.Utility.TranslateCoordinates(point2, acWorld, acDisplayDCS, False)

 

        ReDim Preserve point1DCS(0 To 1)   ' Change this to a 2D array by removing the Z position

        ReDim Preserve point2DCS(0 To 1)   ' Change this to a 2D array by removing the Z position

 

        ' Send information about window to current layout

        ThisDrawing.ActiveLayout.SetWindowToPlot(point1DCS, point2DCS)

 

        ' Read back window information

        ThisDrawing.ActiveLayout.GetWindowToPlot(point1DCS, point2DCS)

 

        MsgBox "Press any key to plot the following window:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _

               "Lower Left: " & point1(0) & ", " & point1(1) & vbCrLf & _

               "Upper Right: " & point2(0) & ", " & point2(1)

 

        ' Be sure to plot a view, not some other plot style

        ThisDrawing.ActiveLayout.PlotType = acWindow

 

        ' Send Plot To Window

        ThisDrawing.ActiveLayout.ConfigName = "DWG to PDF.pc3"

        ThisDrawing.Plot.DisplayPlotPreview acFullPreview

 

    End Sub