Contextual Array Ribbon Tab Tip

(Today's guest post comes courtesy of Autodesk Product Support Team Lead, Silvia Menon. Thanks, Silvia.)

As many of you may have noticed, there were some significant changes to the ARRAY command in AutoCAD 2012, which added a lot of new functionality like associative arrays, Array along a path, and more. This is well documented in the Help, and you can also look at a video that shows the new functions in the JTB World post, Associative Array in AutoCAD 2012.

One very handy feature is the contextual Array ribbon tab that lets you edit the parameters of an array after it was created.

Here is a little tip to get the Array ribbon tab to display automatically, right at the creation of your array, not just when you select an existing array:

1. Run the CUI command to open the CUI Editor
2. In the command list, search for the commands beginning with ARRAY

3. Select the desired command (Rectangular Array, Polar Array or Path Array) and modify the Macro to the one shown below:

   Rectangular Array (ARRAYRECT)
^C^C(command "arrayrect" PAUSE "" "1" "1" "X")(command "select" "single" "last")(sssetfirst nil (ssget "_p"))(princ)

   Polar Array (ARRAYPOLAR)
^C^C(command "arraypolar" PAUSE "" PAUSE "" "" "X")(command "select" "single" "last")(sssetfirst nil (ssget "_p"))(princ)

   Path Array (ARRAYPATH)
^C^C(command "arraypath" PAUSE "" PAUSE "1" "D" "X")(command "select" "single" "last")(sssetfirst nil (ssget "_p"))(princ)

4. Click OK to close the CUI Editor and save the changes.

Now, when you select the desired option of the Array command from the Ribbon or from a toolbar, it will convert the selected object to an associative array object and automatically select it, so that you can then enter the desired values for your Array in the ribbon.

(Please note: this will not impact the behavior of the ARRAY command when you enter it on the command line)

Enjoy!

Comments

[Jürgen A. Becker]

Great Post.

Because your macro select only one object you can insert the following for selecting more objects

^C^CSelect;\

After this your macro starts with same changes:

(command "arraypolar" "_P" ... )

Thanks.

Regards Jürgen

[Silvia Menon]

This is great feedback, thanks for sharing! :-)