Updating AutoCAD Electrical "Web links" - Pat Murnen's neat solution

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  Updating AutoCAD Electrical "Web links" - Pat Murnen's neat solution
  March 7, 2007, 04:42 PM Nate Holt

  Here is a customer issue that Pat resolved with a nice work-around. New web links were added to the default catalog lookup database but there was not good way to get them written out to legacy electrical designers. The only way would be to do a tedious catalog re-assignment to the affected components.
  
  First, here's a little background... on catalog part number assignment, AutoCAD Electrical can embed a web link on the electrical component.
  
  For example, here is a web link defined for a particular Allen-Bradley relay coil part number record in the default catalog lookup database:
  
  
  This can be accessed later from the "Catalog check" dialog or while "surfing" on the component tag.
  
  
  
  This value is written to the component or panel footprint as "Xdata" when the catalog assignment is originally made. But if the catalog lookup database is revised with new catalog web links, then there is currently no provision to go back to legacy designs and update/rewrite these new web link values back to the component Xdata.
  
  This is where Pat came through with an update utility (Download file here).
  
  Here's her description on how it works:
  
  There are two different calls (type in on the AutoCAD command line) depending on whether or not you want to select the objects or run it on the entire drawing. For each selected block which carries catalog information on the CAT and MFG attributes, the PINLIST and WEBLINK values will be pulled from the project’s catalog database and written to the component.
  
  APPLOAD the lisp file above. Then, at your AutoCAD command line, type...
  
  WEBLINK_UPD [Enter] will prompt you to select the objects to run this function on.
  - or -
  WEBLINK_UPD_ALL [Enter] will run on all the component blocks found on the active drawing.
  
  This "all" function can be called in a script. For example, if added to a script it could be called from AutoCAD Electrical's Project Wide Utilities section and easily run on a project. Sample script file is here.
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