Open DWG files and manipulate them

[Bregolas3]

I am trying to figure out if it is possible to open multiple already existing dwg files through pyautocad and manipulate them to create a single dwg file. Basically, I am trying to figure out if I can take various drawings of different length walls and manipulate those walls to create a single room. I am trying to automate this process as each wall is already drawn and it is tedious to pull in each wall every time I go to draw a room. Does pyautocad support something like this? I was unable to find anything in the documentation on opening and manipulating previously created DWG files.

[CEXT-Dan]

Sure, you need a CAD platform like AutoCAD, with pyautocad you can use AutoCAD's ActiveX API to insert each sub drawing into a main drawing with InsertBlock, you can then manipulate each item in the block, or explode all the blocks into modelspace

[Bregolas3]

Would you mind possibly walking me through how I could take four walls and manipulate them in a way where I rotate the walls to create a room in this capacity? If I have each wall drawn and I just need to insert them into the drawing, I would need to make each wall a block right? And then pyautocad lets me rotate each wall and place it in a manner where they line up so it creates the room right? Would a previously existing subdrawing be able to be placed in this manner? And then, say I wanted to automate the process of creating the end product and creating the file(s) that would be returned to me as a full drawing, is that something that pyautocad can also do? And if so what would I need to call for that?

[CEXT-Dan]

Inserting blocks is a fundamental operation you should probably understand before you begin writing code.

it’s also a good idea to become somewhat familiar with the API pyautocad accesses https://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-A809CD71-4655-44E2-B674-1FE200B9FE30

insertBlock imports the drawing and creates the block(s) for you The insert block has insertion point, scale and rotation arguments https://help.autodesk.com/view/OARX/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-17F86FDD-B7FC-4F43-9F16-B4958F73A66D

`pseudo code from pyautocad import Autocad,APoint acad = Autocad(create_if_not_exists = True)

one for each wall

point = APoint(0,0) wallX = acad.model.InsertBlock(point, “wallpath.dwg”, scaleX, ScaleY, scaleZ, Rotation)

doc = acad.ActiveDocument

doc.SaveAs("C: \room.dwg") `