ESR can process many different type of Entities – in fact it is intended to include all entity types except Blocks and Text / Mtext. In reality, ESR does not process absolutely All entity types, but it does work with most common entity types. Another PET tool – OSR will search and replace All entity types but with only those properties that all entities have in common.
Search & Replace using Object Data
Of course ESR allows Searching using Object Data (AutoCAD Map only), the same as all PET functions. When you pick the Search Using Object Data Button , A dialog box is displayed allowing you to select the Search Object Data Table . Any Object Data Table in the current drawing is available. Once the Object Data Table is selected, All Fields in that Table are available.
In this example notice that the Search Object Data uses Wildcards to Search For any object with a Field name of SEG_ID that begins with RC_12. And Replaces the data in the INSP_DATE field with 11/12/13
Working with PET Menu’s
All PET menus work in a similar manner to create an Action List made up of any combination of Search actions and Replace Actions. The menu will initially have no Action items and the default action of all Criteria is to Find Everything and Change Nothing, so if you pick OK in the ASR menu with no Action Items, all blocks will be found and selected (they are also stored in a named selection set).
Here’s an example of creating an Action: First you choose which Criteria you want to set – in this example we will set the Search Block Layer criteria in the ASR menu. When you pick it from the pulldown, it will be entered into the Action Entry area. You will see the Criteria name and a Help string to remind you of the setting choices. Next you make your entry in the Value field and click the Add Button. This will Add your entry to the Action List and you are ready to enter the next item.
Search choices include 7 Search Criteria. Special Search capabilities include a very flexible Search Elevation control. You can specify a Range in the normal way (#R#) or a contour interval mode ( #I#T# ). This mode specifies a Base Elevation, and Interval and a Tolerance – 0I5T0.1 will find all selected entities with elevation that are 5 foot increments from 0 with a tolerance of 0.1.
Replace choices include 8 Replace Criteria . Some of the special replace criteria includes:
Replace Elevation allows 4 ways to modify Elevations – Rounding, Adding an amount, Multiplying by an amount or setting to an absolute value.
Rotate Points and Shapes – this option does rotate Points, something that can’t be done with standard AutoCAD.
Scale Circles and Shapes – specify relative or absolute scales.
Polyline Modifications
There are a lot of modifications that can be made to Polylines and ESR allows you to perform most of them. We include a section of the ESR menu dedicated to Polyline Modification and we you to set a number of SETVARs as a part of the ESR process.
