Verify

VERIFY is an AutoLISP application program developed by Design CAD. Its purpose is to check drawings against a defined company standard.

This section covers the setup and use of VERIFY. If you would like general information on the program, click here.

Create a set of standards for your company.

The first step is (rather obviously) to make sure that you (or your company) do in fact have a set of drawing standards, that these have been published and distributed to external contractors if you use them. It makes sense to offer contract staff a briefing and provide copies of several 'test' drawings that meet the organizational standard. These drawings might be in (say) AutoCAD 14 format since it is a common file format.

Create ASCII files defining standard

Next create a series of ASCII files containing lists of approved layer names, block names, lettering styles, named views, viewports names, linetype styles, and dimension styles standards approved by our company.

Verify uses a group of simple text files to contain approved names. The filenames must confirm to the list below and include the extension .STD.

Filename

Purpose

layers.std

List of layer names

blocks.std

List of block names

styles.std

List of text styles

views.std

List of stored views

viewport.std

List of paper space viewports

ltypes.std

List of linetypes

dimstyle.std

List of dimension styles

These files must be 'clean' ASCII files, created with Windows Notepad or some other text editor.

Examples of standards files

The figure below shows part of a typical layers standards file. The filename is layers.std. Note the use of the semi-colon for comments in the file. We do recommend that you insert copious comments in the file.

; GENERAL LAYER NAMES FOR DRAWING MANAGEMENT
File LAYERS.STD July, 2001 Authorised by J Bloggs

0
BORDER
MANAGEMENT_CONSTRUCTION
MANAGEMENT_LOGO
MANAGEMENT_NORTH_PT
MANAGEMENT_NOTES_LEGEND
MANAGEMENT_SERV_RELOCATION
MANAGEMENT_TEMPLATE
MANAGEMENT_TITLEBLOCK
MANAGEMENT_VPORT
TEXTS
TEXTM
TEXTL
DEFPOINTS
;-APPROVED LAYER NAMES FOR EXISTING DRAINS -----
EX_DRAIN_BC
EX_DRAIN_DSEP
EX_DRAIN_GI
EX_DRAIN_HW
EX_DRAIN_INV

Other 'standards' files are structured similarly.

Install VERIFY on your computer

Use Windows Explorer to make a folder called VERIFY. Copy all the files from the distribution disk to this folder. The following files should be present:

Verify.lsp

blocks.std

dimstyle.std

layers.std

ucs.std

verify.cfg

styles.std

viewport.std

views.std

Create an output folder

Although not an absolute requirement, for ease of use we recommend that you set up a folder called Output under the VERIFY folder as shown in the figure below. In the next section, we will alter the configuration file so that the output files that VERIFY generates are deposited in this folder.

Edit the VERIFY configuration file

We have provided a configuration file with VERIFY. The file is called Verify.cfg

As mentioned in the previous section, this file can be edited in order to set the destination folder for the output files that VERIFY generates. In VERIFY version 1.3, there is only one line in this file.

The line 'as delivered' is shown below.

C:\Verify

We recommend changing the line to:

C:\Verify\Output.

Make sure that you use Windows Notepad to edit this file. Do not use Microsoft Word.

Running VERIFY

You are now ready to run VERIFY on one of your drawings.

Start AutoCAD (12, 13, 14 or AutoCAD 2000) or IntelliCAD (any version).

Open the drawing that you want to check.

Load Verify using the following syntax by typing at the command line.

(load "c:/verify/verify.lsp")

You must include the opening and closing bracket and the quotes around the path and filename. Note the use of the forward slash.

You should see the statement 'Loading Verify 1.3'. Loading this file creates a new command - VERIFY.

Type the new command VERIFY on the command line and the program will run. You are first asked (in the conventional AutoCAD fashion, whether you want to analyse the Layers/Blocks/Styles etc. separately or (the default) - all of these.

The contents of the drawing are compared to those of the standards and VERIFY creates an output file of the same name as the drawing, but the suffix will be .VFY.

The figure below shows a screen shot of the IntelliCAD text box while VERIFY is running. VERIFY inserts a series of dot (period) on the Command line as it runs to indicate that processing is taking place.

After processing, VERIFY offers the chance to view the output file immediately with Windows Notepad. We have set the default to (No) and recommend that you start Windows Notepad as a separate process to view the output file (which will be stored in the C:\Verify\Output folder).

Customising the AutoCAD environment to use VERIFY more efficiently

We find it useful to put a custom 'Load and run VERIFY' option on one of the drop down menus. This is especially useful if you have lots of drawings to check. The figure below shows a typical custom menu.

We hide behind the menu item quite a reasonably complex series of steps.

(load "C:/verify/verify");verify;A;N;close;open;

Search path

Alternatively, you might find it useful to put the VERIFY folder on the search path. Then you will only need to type (load "verify"). A call to Verify.lsp could also be made in the ACAD.lsp or ICAD.lsp file.

View the output file

Part of a typical output file from VERIFY is shown below. Note that several of the layers (shown on the right) do not match the company standard (indicated by a 'No" statement in column 3).

Output

Any word processor may be used to examine the file. It will contain a complete report about the drawing, similar to that shown above.

Since ACAD14 and IntelliCAD allow you to load multiple drawings in the same session, the VERIFY command can quickly be run on multiple drawings. Start Windows Explorer and select a group of drawing files that you want to 'VERIFY'. Drag the (the group of files) onto the AutoCAD or IntelliCAD icon.

Auditing drawings

Note that our program is not a replacement for the AutoCAD command AUDIT. Click here to learn about auditing drawings.

Appendix

The FLAGS value applies to all TABLES settings (Viewports, UCS, Blocks, Layers, etc), and for some values has the same meaning for each. It is a bit coded value, with a value of 16 indicating the value is externally dependent on an Xref, a value of 32 indicating the Xref was resolved, and a value of 64 indicating the entry was referenced by at least one entity in the drawing.

Additionally, other values are specific to particular table types. For example, the LAYER table regards a value of 0 as showing the layer is on and thawed, a value of 1 indicating the layer is frozen, a value of 4 indicating the layer has viewport exclusivity and the value 2 is not used (at least as far as the Release 11 Manual I checked was concerned).

Being a bit coded value, this represents the binary bits being set in a particular number, but the number itself is displayed as a decimal. That is, valid values would be 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1, 0etc. A FLAG value of 65 would indicate values of 64 and 2 are set, and all others are zero (the number 65 is represented in binary as 01000001 - 2 bits set). 64 would indicate the entry was referenced by at least one entity, and 1 would be specific to the table type -for a layer table it would indicate the layer was frozen.