The question of how to define a new table style programmatically has come up a couple of times over the last week or so, so this post shows how to approach this. I've used the code from this previous post as a basis for this post's.
The important thing to know is that TableStyle objects are stored in a special dictionary, which can be accessed via a Database's TableStyleDictionaryId property. This ObjectId property allows you to access the dictionary, from which you can query the contents, determine whether your style exists and add a new one if it doesn't. The code to specify the colour and formatting of the table style is reasonably straightforward.
Here's some C# code to define a new "Garish Table Style" with a red header/title area, yellow data area and magenta text throughout (better put on your sunglasses before running it... :-):
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Colors;
namespace TableAndStyleCreation
{
public class Commands
{
[CommandMethod("CTWS")]
static public void CreateTableWithStyle()
{
Document doc =
Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;
Database db = doc.Database;
Editor ed = doc.Editor;
PromptPointResult pr =
ed.GetPoint("\nEnter table insertion point: ");
if (pr.Status == PromptStatus.OK)
{
Transaction tr =
doc.TransactionManager.StartTransaction();
using (tr)
{
// First let us create our custom style,
// if it doesn't exist
const string styleName = "Garish Table Style";
ObjectId tsId = ObjectId.Null;
DBDictionary sd =
(DBDictionary)tr.GetObject(
db.TableStyleDictionaryId,
OpenMode.ForRead
);
// Use the style if it already exists
if (sd.Contains(styleName))
{
tsId = sd.GetAt(styleName);
}
else
{
// Otherwise we have to create it
TableStyle ts = new TableStyle();
// Make the header area red
ts.SetBackgroundColor(
Color.FromColorIndex(ColorMethod.ByAci, 1),
(int)(RowType.HeaderRow | RowType.TitleRow)
);
// And the data area yellow
ts.SetBackgroundColor(
Color.FromColorIndex(ColorMethod.ByAci, 2),
(int)RowType.DataRow
);
// With magenta text everywhere (yeuch 🙂
ts.SetColor(
Color.FromColorIndex(ColorMethod.ByAci, 6),
(int)(RowType.HeaderRow |
RowType.TitleRow |
RowType.DataRow)
);
// Add our table style to the dictionary
// and to the transaction
sd.UpgradeOpen();
tsId = sd.SetAt(styleName, ts);
tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(ts, true);
sd.DowngradeOpen();
}
BlockTable bt =
(BlockTable)tr.GetObject(
doc.Database.BlockTableId,
OpenMode.ForRead
);
Table tb = new Table();
// Use our table style
if (tsId == ObjectId.Null)
// This should not happen, unless the
// above logic changes
tb.TableStyle = db.Tablestyle;
else
tb.TableStyle = tsId;
tb.NumRows = 5;
tb.NumColumns = 3;
tb.SetRowHeight(3);
tb.SetColumnWidth(15);
tb.Position = pr.Value;
// Create a 2-dimensional array
// of our table contents
string[,] str = new string[5, 4];
str[0, 0] = "Part No.";
str[0, 1] = "Name ";
str[0, 2] = "Material ";
str[1, 0] = "1876-1";
str[1, 1] = "Flange";
str[1, 2] = "Perspex";
str[2, 0] = "0985-4";
str[2, 1] = "Bolt";
str[2, 2] = "Steel";
str[3, 0] = "3476-K";
str[3, 1] = "Tile";
str[3, 2] = "Ceramic";
str[4, 0] = "8734-3";
str[4, 1] = "Kean";
str[4, 2] = "Mostly water";
// Use a nested loop to add and format each cell
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
{
tb.SetTextHeight(i, j, 1);
tb.SetTextString(i, j, str[i, j]);
tb.SetAlignment(i, j, CellAlignment.MiddleCenter);
}
}
tb.GenerateLayout();
BlockTableRecord btr =
(BlockTableRecord)tr.GetObject(
bt[BlockTableRecord.ModelSpace],
OpenMode.ForWrite
);
btr.AppendEntity(tb);
tr.AddNewlyCreatedDBObject(tb, true);
tr.Commit();
}
}
}
}
}
Here's what happens when we load the module and run the CTWS command, selecting a location for our "garish" table:
And if we launch AutoCAD's TABLESTYLE command we can see our custom style in the list:
Update
A further post on this topic has now been published.
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