Adding Notes to an entity programmatically

By Mikako Harada

Issue

Using AutoCAD Architecture and Civil 3D, you can add Notes to an entity on the Extended Data tab of Property Palette. How can we do the same programmatically?

Solution

A Note is an AEC object. It is AecDbTextNote or TextNote in .NET.

In .NET API, Autodesk.Aec.DatabaseServices.TextNote class is exposed in AecBaseMgd.dll .NET assembly. You can write a .NET application to access Note objects by referencing to AecBaseMgd.dll. This assembly is also installed with Civil 3D. This means you can access this AEC object in Civil 3D as well.

Here is the command written in VB.NET. It asks you select a line and add Notes.

Imports AcDb2 = Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices
Imports AecDb = Autodesk.Aec.DatabaseServices

Public Class TextNote
 
   _
  Public Sub AddTextNote()
 
    ' Get hold of some common objects
 
    Dim doc As Document = Application.DocumentManager.
      MdiActiveDocument
    Dim ed As Editor = doc.Editor
    Dim trMgr As TransactionManager = doc.TransactionManager
    Dim db As Database = doc.Database
 
    ' Select a line
 
    Dim optEnt As New PromptEntityOptions(vbLf & "Select a line")
    optEnt.SetRejectMessage(
      vbLf & "Selected entity is NOT a line, try again...")
    optEnt.AddAllowedClass(GetType(Line), False)
 
    Dim resEnt As PromptEntityResult = ed.GetEntity(optEnt)
    If resEnt.Status  PromptStatus.OK Then
      ed.WriteMessage("Selection error - aborting")
      Exit Sub
    End If
 
    ' Open for wrote 
 
    Dim tr As Transaction = trMgr.StartTransaction
 
    Try
      Dim obj As AcObject =
        tr.GetObject(resEnt.ObjectId, AcDb2.OpenMode.ForWrite)
 
      obj.CreateExtensionDictionary()
 
      ' Create a Note object
 
      Dim txt As AecDb.TextNote = New AecDb.TextNote()
      txt.Note = "My Notes created by VB.NET"
 
      ' Create Extension dictionary
 
      Dim extDict As DBDictionary =
        tr.GetObject(
          obj.ExtensionDictionary(), AcDb2.OpenMode.ForWrite, False)
 
      ' Add the Note to Extension dictionary
      ' TextNote.ExtensionDictionaryName is "AEC_TEXT_NOTE"
      extDict.SetAt(AecDb.TextNote.ExtensionDictionaryName, txt)
      tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(txt, True)
 
      tr.Commit()
 
    Catch
      MsgBox("Error: accessing to Notes failed!")
    Finally
      tr.Dispose()
    End Try
 
  End Sub
 
End Class
 
If you are working on AutoCAD Architecture, AecDbTextNote class has been exposed in OMF. No API for TextNote is exposed in VBA. This feature was exposed since 2007 releases.