Empty user attribute name depends on cadwork language

[usai-sylvain]

Hi there,

I'm trying to find out if a user attribute is "free" based on it's index.
ac.get_user_attribute_name(9) gives me different results in English, German and French :

• English = "User9"
• German = "User9" (so far so good)
• French = "Utilisateur9" ...

Is there a way to identify unused attributes ? If not, can we have an API call doing that ? please 😁

[Antoine-S-C]

Hi,
Have you tried with :
ac.get_user_attribute(element: int, number: int) -> str:
?
If all elements are empty, then the attribute is not used.

Here is an example that writes the result of attributes 1 to 10 (free or not) :

import attribute_controller as ac
import element_controller as ec

def is_free(number):
    elements = ec.get_all_identifiable_element_ids()
    is_free = True
    for e in elements:
        if ac.get_user_attribute(e, number) != "":
            is_free = False
            break
    return is_free

for n in range(1,11):
    name = ac.get_user_attribute_name(n)
    print(f"{n} {name:15} : {is_free(n)}")

Result :

1 MyUser1         : True
2 MyUser2         : True
3 MyUser3         : False
4 MyUser4         : True
5 MyUser5         : False
6 MyUser6         : True
7 MyUser7         : False
8 MyUser8         : True
9 MyUser9         : False
10 MyUser10       : False

[usai-sylvain]

Bonjour Antoine,

Thanks a lot for your reply and the code sample. I realise I didn't put any context in the question which means I wasn't very clear when I said "unused" attribute.

Your solution loop through all elements in the model and check if this element stores a value at {number}.
Potentially, I could define a user attribute in my init and not use it in my model, which would return "Free" in your example, even though it's already "defined", just not "used"... I should probably have called these "undefined".

What I am looking for is a way to identify if an attribute is "defined" in the init, and I can't check attribute_name == "User{number}" because of the localisation issue. Does this make sense ?

That's what I am doing for now (in cpp)

bool IsEmptyUserAttribute(CwAPI3D::AttributeController* ac, uint32_t attributeID) {
	// Check if this is an empty/default user attribute (e.g., "User9", "User12")
	// The title must be exactly: keyword + ID (e.g., "User9", "Utilisateur9")
	// Not just containing both: "9User" or "UserIsCalled9" are NOT empty attributes

	// Get the attribute name from Cadwork
	auto attr_name = ac->getUserAttributeName(attributeID);
	std::string attributeTitle = ToUTF8String(attr_name);

	// Convert ID to string for comparison
	std::string idStr = std::to_string(attributeID);

	// Check if title matches the pattern: keyword + ID (exactly)
	std::vector<std::string> userAttributeKeywords = {
		"Utilisateur", "User", "Usuario", "Użytkownik", "用户", "Gebruiker"
	};

	for (const auto& keyword : userAttributeKeywords) {
		// Check if title is exactly: keyword + ID
		std::string expectedPattern = keyword + idStr;
		if (attributeTitle == expectedPattern) {
			return true; // It's an empty attribute (e.g., "User9", "Utilisateur9")
		}
	}

	return false; // Not an empty attribute
}

One potential use case could be : I want to let may user create attributes programmatically and I want to avoid overriding existing user attributes.

Sylvain

[Brunner246]

Hi @usai-sylvain ,

Do you need to use a specific index or just the index up to the last attribute used ?

factory->getAttributeController()->getUserAttributeCount()

[usai-sylvain]

Hi Michi,

From my experience, there can be "holes" in the numbering so counting the user attributes wouldn't be enough. Effectively, what I would like is for the method above to have an equivalent in the API because if cadwork changes the "Utilisateur" to something else in the next version, my code wouldn't work anymore...