#4
by lasersafety1
I have found a work around to this issue. I had to make my main "Bill of Materials" table manually, not using the table commands, but by manually drawing my own table lines. I then place my quantity in a box as Mtext. In the other "real" table that is doing some calculations, I select a cell that is going to receive the quantity to apply to a calculation. The cell is unlocked, and I click on the "insert field" box. I then select "entity", and the mouse cursor appears waiting for you to click on the entity you want to select. I select the Mtext in the fake cell of my BOM table, and then the field box appears. In this field box, you can select the property of the Mtext I just selected.. We have many choices of the property to choose from in the list, but you want to choose "CONTENTS". When you choose "contents", the preview should now show the "value" of the Mtext. If this Mtext was written as an integer, for example the number 3, then the value shown in the preview will be "3". Hit "OK".
From here forward, you can lock the contents of the "real" cell in the calculation table and it will always be looking at the Mtext location you have pointed to.
There is one remaining issue, but it isn't difficult. As I change the values of Mtext in my "BOM" table, the values of the "CALC" table will not refresh until I issue a REGEN command. This is pretty much expected. We wish it would always update, but this has been how autocad works for decades.