[Solved] How to get the list of layers in a drawing from the command line

[garciadelcastillo]

Hi!

First of all, I just started using QCAD Pro command line tools, and I am very impressed by how efficient and featureful it is. Big congrats!

Writing a routine to export individual layers from a DWG file to raster. The "-layer=LAYER_NAMES" option from "dwg2bmp" seems to be the way to go, but I need to be able to fetch the layer list first from an external batch process. Is there any way to spit these out to a text file somehow with QCAD's command line tools?

Thanks!

[andrew]

You can use the command line tool "dwginfo". There is currently no batch or bash script for it, but you can invoke it as follows:

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qcad -no-gui -allow-multiple-instances -autostart "scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgInfo/DwgInfo.js" -l

Where -l lists all layers.

[garciadelcastillo]

Wonderful, this is very helpful! A couple questions still...

First, if I run the call from the terminal, I get nothing on the stdout (using window's powershell):

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qcad -no-gui -allow-multiple-instances -autostart "scripts/Pro/Tools/DwgInfo/DwgInfo.js" -l .\atestfile.dwg

However, if instead I create a batch file encapsulating the same logic:

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 @echo off
qcad.exe -no-gui -allow-multiple-instances -autostart scripts\Pro\Tools\DwgInfo\DwgInfo.js %0 %* 1>%temp%\dwginfo.log 2>&1
type %temp%\dwginfo.log
del %temp%\dwginfo.log
 

And call it with:

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.\dwginfo.bat -l .\atestfile.dwg

I get the layers output to the terminal (as well as a bunch of other debug dumps. Why is this difference?

Second question: I need to spit these to a text file or similar to use them somewhere else. I tried using -o options, no luck:

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.\dwginfo.bat -l -output="layers.txt" .\atestfile.dwg

Where can I find the documentation for "DwgInfo.js"? And where can I check the documentation/source for other similar scripts, such as "dwg2bmp", "merge", etc.?

Thanks a lot!

[andrew]

Why is this difference?

A Windows GUI app like QCAD cannot write to stdout (a Windows limitation). The batch file streams to a file, then displays that file.

I need to spit these to a text file or similar to use them somewhere else.

Simply stream the output directly to the file you want instead of %temp%\dwginfo.log:

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qcad.exe -no-gui -allow-multiple-instances -autostart scripts\Pro\Tools\DwgInfo\DwgInfo.js %0 %* 1>myoutputfile.txt

Where can I find the documentation for "DwgInfo.js"?

dwginfo is not an official QCAD tool at this point. -h for usage works as usual.

And where can I check the documentation/source for other similar scripts, such as "dwg2bmp", "merge", etc.?

https://qcad.org/en/products/qcad-command-line-tools

[garciadelcastillo]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks a lot, that was very helpful. I guess my question was more like where can I see the source for `dwginfo` in order to learn from it, but I guess the answer is that I cannot, since it is part of the pro bundle...?

Cheers,

[andrew]

I guess my question was more like where can I see the source for `dwginfo` in order to learn from it, but I guess the answer is that I cannot, since it is part of the pro bundle...?

That's correct. However, there are plenty of other (script) sources available at:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/tree/master/scripts