Installation¶

If you have pip or easy_install, you can just:

pip install --upgrade pyautocad

or:

easy_install -U pyautocad

Also, you can download Windows installer from PyPI pyautocad page.

Requirements¶

• comtypes

  Note

  If you are using pip or easy_install, then it will be installed automatically. Otherwise you should install comtypes package manually.

• Optional: xlrd and tablib for working with tables

Retrieving AutoCAD ActiveX documentation¶

A copy of the AutoCAD ActiveX guide and reference can be found in the help directory of your AutoCAD install.

• acad_aag.chm - ActiveX and VBA Developer’s Guide
• acadauto.chm - ActiveX and VBA Reference

Reference can also be found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\acadauto.chm

What’s next?¶

Read the Usage section, or look for real applications in examples folder of source distribution.

For more info on features see API documentation and sources.

Main interface and types¶

For our first example, we will use Autocad (main Automation object) and pyautocad.types.APoint for operations with coordinates

from pyautocad import Autocad, APoint

Let’s create AutoCAD application or connect to already running application:

acad = Autocad(create_if_not_exists=True)
acad.prompt("Hello, Autocad from Python\n")
print acad.doc.Name

To work with AutoCAD documents and objects we can use ActiveX interface, Autocad (from pyautocad) contains some methods to simplify common Automation tasks, such as object iteration and searching, getting objects from user’s selection, printing messages.

There are shortcuts for current ActiveDocument - Autocad.doc and ActiveDocument.ModelSpace - Autocad.model

Let’s add some objects to document:

p1 = APoint(0, 0)
p2 = APoint(50, 25)
for i in range(5):
    text = acad.model.AddText(u'Hi %s!' % i, p1, 2.5)
    acad.model.AddLine(p1, p2)
    acad.model.AddCircle(p1, 10)
    p1.y += 10

Now our document contains some Texts, Lines and Circles, let’s iterate them all:

for obj in acad.iter_objects():
    print obj.ObjectName

Wea can also iterate objects of concrete type:

for text in acad.iter_objects('Text'):
    print text.TextString, text.InsertionPoint

Or multiple types:

for obj in acad.iter_objects(['Text', 'Line']):
    print obj.ObjectName

Also we can find first object with some conditions. For example, let’s find first text item which contains 3:

def text_contains_3(text_obj):
    return '3' in text_obj.TextString

text = acad.find_one('Text', predicate=text_contains_3)
print text.TextString

To modify objects in document, we need to find interesting objects and change its properties. Some properties are described with constants, e.g. text alignment. These constants can be accessed through ACAD. Let’s change all text objects text alignment:

from pyautocad import ACAD

for text in acad.iter_objects('Text'):
    old_insertion_point = APoint(text.InsertionPoint)
    text.Alignment = ACAD.acAlignmentRight
    text.TextAlignmentPoint = old_insertion_point

In previous code we have converted text.InsertionPoint to APoint because we can’t just use default tuple when setting another properties such as text.TextAlignmentPoint.

If wee need to change position of some object, we should use APoint, for example let’s change lines end position:

for line in acad.iter_objects('Line'):
    p1 = APoint(line.StartPoint)
    line.EndPoint = p1 - APoint(20, 0)

Working with tables¶

To simplify importing and exporting data there is Table class exist. It allows you to read and write tabular data in popular formats:

• csv
• xls
• xlsx (write only)
• json

Let’s try to solve some basic task. We need to save text and position from all text objects to Excel file, and then load it back.

First we need to add some objects to AutoCAD:

from pyautocad import Autocad, APoint
from pyautocad.contrib.tables import Table

acad = Autocad()
p1 = APoint(0, 0)
for i in range(5):
    obj = acad.model.AddText(u'Hi %s!' % i, p1, 2.5)
    p1.y += 10

Now we can iterate this objects and save them to Excel table:

table = Table()
for obj in acad.iter_objects('Text'):
    x, y, z = obj.InsertionPoint
    table.writerow([obj.TextString, x, y, z])
table.save('data.xls', 'xls')

After saving this data to ‘data.xls’ and probably changing it with some table processor software (e.g. Microsoft Office Excel) we can retrieve our data from file:

data = Table.data_from_file('data.xls')

data will contain:

[[u'Hi 0!', 0.0, 0.0, 0.0],
 [u'Hi 1!', 0.0, 10.0, 0.0],
 [u'Hi 2!', 0.0, 20.0, 0.0],
 [u'Hi 3!', 0.0, 30.0, 0.0],
 [u'Hi 4!', 0.0, 40.0, 0.0]]

Improve speed¶

• ActiveX technology is quite slow. When you are accessing object attributes like position, text, etc, every time call is passed to AutoCAD. It can slowdown execution time. For example if you have program, which combines single line text based on its relative positions, you probably need to get each text position several times. To speed this up, you can cache objects attributes using the pyautocad.cache.Cached proxy (see example in class documentation)

• To improve speed of AutoCAD table manipulations, you can use Table.RegenerateTableSuppressed = True or handy context manager suppressed_regeneration_of(table):

  table = acad.model.AddTable(pos, rows, columns, row_height, col_width)
  with suppressed_regeneration_of(table):
      table.SetAlignment(ACAD.acDataRow, ACAD.acMiddleCenter)
      for row in range(rows):
          for col in range(columns):
              table.SetText(row, col, '%s %s' % (row, col))
  

Utility functions¶

There is also some utility functions for work with AutoCAD text objects and more. See pyautocad.utils documentation.

api - Main Autocad interface¶

class pyautocad.api.Autocad(create_if_not_exists=False, visible=True)[source]¶

Main AutoCAD Automation object

Parameters:	create_if_not_exists – if AutoCAD doesn’t run, then new instanse will be crated visible – new AutoCAD instance will be visible if True (default)

app¶

Returns active AutoCAD.Application

if Autocad was created with create_if_not_exists=True, it will create AutoCAD.Application if there is no active one

doc¶

Returns ActiveDocument of current Application

ActiveDocument¶

Same as doc

Application¶

Same as app

model¶

ModelSpace from active document

iter_layouts(doc=None, skip_model=True)[source]¶

Iterate layouts from doc

Parameters:	doc – document to iterate layouts from if doc=None (default), ActiveDocument is used skip_model – don’t include ModelSpace if True

iter_objects(object_name_or_list=None, block=None, limit=None, dont_cast=False)[source]¶

Iterate objects from block

Parameters:	object_name_or_list – part of object type name, or list of it block – Autocad block, default - ActiveDocument.ActiveLayout.Block limit – max number of objects to return, default infinite dont_cast – don’t retrieve best interface for object, may speedup iteration. Returned objects should be casted by caller

iter_objects_fast(object_name_or_list=None, container=None, limit=None)[source]¶

Shortcut for iter_objects(dont_cast=True)

Shouldn’t be used in normal situations

find_one(object_name_or_list, container=None, predicate=None)[source]¶

Returns first occurance of object which match predicate

Parameters:	object_name_or_list – like in iter_objects() container – like in iter_objects() predicate – callable, which accepts object as argument and returns True or False
Returns:	Object if found, else None

best_interface(obj)[source]¶

Retrieve best interface for object

prompt(text)[source]¶

Prints text in console and in AutoCAD prompt

get_selection(text='Select objects')[source]¶

Asks user to select objects

Parameters:	text – prompt for selection

static aDouble(*seq)¶

shortcut for pyautocad.types.aDouble()

static aInt(*seq)¶

shortcut for pyautocad.types.aInt()

static aShort(*seq)¶

shortcut for pyautocad.types.aShort()

pyautocad.api.ACAD¶

Constants from AutoCAD type library, for example:

text.Alignment = ACAD.acAlignmentRight

types - 3D Point and other AutoCAD data types¶

class pyautocad.types.APoint[source]¶

3D point with basic geometric operations and support for passing as a

parameter for AutoCAD Automation functions

Usage:

>>> p1 = APoint(10, 10)
>>> p2 = APoint(20, 20)
>>> p1 + p2
APoint(30.00, 30.00, 0.00)

Also it supports iterable as parameter:

>>> APoint([10, 20, 30])
APoint(10.00, 20.00, 30.00)
>>> APoint(range(3))
APoint(0.00, 1.00, 2.00)

Supported math operations: +, -, *, /, +=, -=, *=, /=:

>>> p = APoint(10, 10)
>>> p + p
APoint(20.00, 20.00, 0.00)
>>> p + 10
APoint(20.00, 20.00, 10.00)
>>> p * 2
APoint(20.00, 20.00, 0.00)
>>> p -= 1
>>> p
APoint(9.00, 9.00, -1.00)

It can be converted to tuple or list:

>>> tuple(APoint(1, 1, 1))
(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)

x¶

x coordinate of 3D point

y¶

y coordinate of 3D point

z¶

z coordinate of 3D point

distance_to(other)[source]¶

Returns distance to other point

Parameters:	other – APoint instance or any sequence of 3 coordinates

pyautocad.types.distance(p1, p2)[source]¶

Returns distance between two points p1 and p2

pyautocad.types.aDouble(*seq)[source]¶

Returns array.array of doubles (‘d’ code) for passing to AutoCAD

For 3D points use APoint instead.

pyautocad.types.aInt(*seq)[source]¶

Returns array.array of ints (‘l’ code) for passing to AutoCAD

pyautocad.types.aShort(*seq)[source]¶

Returns array.array of shorts (‘h’ code) for passing to AutoCAD

utils - Utility functions¶

pyautocad.utils.timing(message)[source]¶

Context manager for timing execution

Parameters:	message – message to print

Usage:

with timing('some operation'):
    do_some_actions()

Will print:

some operation: 1.000 s  # where 1.000 is actual execution time

pyautocad.utils.suppressed_regeneration_of(table)[source]¶

New in version 0.1.2.

Context manager. Suppresses table regeneration to dramatically speedup table operations

Parameters:	table – table object

with suppressed_regeneration_of(table):
    populate(table)  # or change its properties

pyautocad.utils.unformat_mtext(s, exclude_list=('P', 'S'))[source]¶

Returns string with removed format information

Parameters:	s – string with multitext exclude_list – don’t touch tags from this list. Default (‘P’, ‘S’) for newline and fractions

>>> text = ur'{\fGOST type A|b0|i0|c204|p34;TEST\fGOST type A|b0|i0|c0|p34;123}'
>>> unformat_mtext(text)
u'TEST123'

pyautocad.utils.mtext_to_string(s)[source]¶

Returns string with removed format innformation as unformat_mtext() and P (paragraphs) replaced with newlines

>>> text = ur'{\fGOST type A|b0|i0|c204|p34;TEST\fGOST type A|b0|i0|c0|p34;123}\Ptest321'
>>> mtext_to_string(text)
u'TEST123\ntest321'

pyautocad.utils.string_to_mtext(s)[source]¶

Returns string in Autocad multitext format

Replaces newllines \n with \P, etc.

pyautocad.utils.text_width(text_item)[source]¶

Returns width of Autocad Text or MultiText object

pyautocad.utils.dynamic_print(text)[source]¶

Prints text dynamically in one line

Used for printing something like animations, or progress

contrib.tables - Import and export tabular data from popular formats¶

class pyautocad.contrib.tables.Table[source]¶

Represents table with ability to import and export data to following formats:

• csv
• xls
• xlsx (write only)
• json

When you need to store some data, it can be done as follows:

table = Table()
for i in range(5):
    table.writerow([i, i, i])

table.save('data.xls', 'xls')

To import data from file, use data_from_file():

data = Table.data_from_file('data.xls')

writerow(row)[source]¶

Add row to table

Parameters:	row (list or tuple) – row to add

append(row)[source]¶

Synonym for writerow()

clear()[source]¶

Clear current table

save(filename, fmt, encoding='cp1251')[source]¶

Save data to file

Parameters:	filename – path to file fmt – data format (one of supported, e.g. ‘xls’, ‘csv’ encoding – encoding for ‘csv’ format

convert(fmt)[source]¶

Return data, converted to format

Parameters:	fmt – desirable format of data

Note: to convert to csv format, use to_csv()

See also available_write_formats()

to_csv(stream, encoding='cp1251', delimiter=';', **kwargs)[source]¶

Writes data in csv format to stream

Parameters:	stream – stream to write data to encoding – output encoding delimiter – csv delimiter kwargs – additional parameters for csv.writer

static data_from_file(filename, fmt=None, csv_encoding='cp1251', csv_delimiter=';')[source]¶

Returns data in desired format from file

Parameters:	filename – path to file with data fmt – format of file, if it’s None, then it tries to guess format from filename extension csv_encoding – encoding for csv data csv_delimiter – delimiter for csv data

Format should be in available_read_formats()

cache - Cache all object’s attributes¶

class pyautocad.cache.Cached(instance)[source]¶

Proxy for caching object attributes.

Consider external class Foo with expensive property (we can’t change its code):

class Foo(object):
    @property
    def x(self):
        print 'consuming time'
        time.sleep(1)
        return 42

Cache all attributes and test access:

foo = Foo()
cached_foo = Cached(foo)
for i in range(10):
    print cached_foo.x

Output:

consuming time
42
42
42
42
42

It’s possible to switch caching off with switch_caching() and retrieve original instance with get_original()

get_original()[source]¶

Returns original instance

switch_caching(is_enabled)[source]¶

Switch caching on or off

Parameters:	is_enabled (bool) – caching status True or False