This routine colours Blocks in the current drawing according to the status of the specification item they relate to on the Specs & Standards website. 'Innovation' items change to Green, 'Current' to Yellow, 'Under Review' to Magenta and 'Archived' to Red. This can also be used to identify 'non-specification' items in the drawing as they will not change colour.

Important Note: If you have opened up an existing drawing, it is quite possible that the specification or Blocks on the Specs & Standards website will have been changed since you last worked on the drawing. To ensure you are getting the correct results, it is best to re-run the Add / Update Links routine before running this routine. This will ensure that the information held in the Blocks is up to date so that this routine is able to deliver the correct results.

First the routine checks the current drawing space, if it is Paper Space the user is prompted to switch to Model Space before re-running the routine. Next a check is made to see if any of the Blocks in the drawing currently have their colours set as per the Colour by Spec Status or Colour by Block Version routines, if this is the case the user is asked to run the Reset Colour routine before running this routine again.

If the initial checks are passed, the routine proceeds to check each Block in the drawing's Block listing to see if it contains an ICONSYSTEMSPECSTATUS attribute. With those that do, the value of the attribute is used to determine what colour to change any Blocks that are placed the drawing to. There are four Spec Status options:

• Innovation i.e. Blocks that relate to items that are in trial and are not yet approved specification. Matching Blocks will be changed to Green (colour 90) and linetype 'Continuous'
• Current i.e. Blocks that relate to items that are currently approved specification. Matching Blocks will be changed to Yellow (colour no. 50) and linetype 'Continuous'
• Under Review i.e. Blocks that relate to items that are currently under review. Matching Blocks will be changed to Magenta (colour no. 220) and linetype 'Continuous'
• Archived i.e. Blocks that relate to items that are no longer current, that have been archived / superseded. Matching Blocks will be changed to Red (colour no. 240) and linetype 'Continuous'

Note that whilst it would be unlikely that any Archived items would form part of a new build project, they could well be used in a refurbishment project as they are existing items of equipment, but do not form part of the latest specification. They are extremely likely to be present in historic CAD plans.

1.14 - 17/08/17: Added IconSystem to list of blocks to be ignored
1.13 - 30/03/17: Block download authentication added; minor fix to reporting
1.12 - 21/06/16: Revised to separate specification versions from Block versions and to only colour Blocks relating to the currently configured website. Layer states are now saved when the routine starts, then restored when it completes.
1.11 - 17/06/16: Updated storing and restoring of AutoCAD variables
1.10 - 14/06/16: Now storing any specific Block colours prior to colouring
1.09 - 10/06/16: Implemented a rule that the drawing must be in Model Space before the routine will run
1.08 - 06/06/16: Reworked process for ignoring Blocks. The routine now ignores hatch, xrefs, Block created from bound xrefs, cut and pasted Blocks (i.e. where the name begins with A$), any Block name beginning with an underscore, any Block name beginning with TerminatorO and / or DimBlks
1.07 - 27/05/16: Added automatic creation of Entity Selection Sets. Refer to separate Item Selector help page for details
1.06 - 19/05/16: Set to ignore Blocks named: _ARCHTICK, _CLOSED, _CLOSEDBLANK, _NONE, _OBLIQUE, _OPEN, _OPEN90, _ORIGIN, DIMBLK, TERMINATOROPEN or TERMINATOROPEN_0.5
1.04 - 05/05/16: Timer and counter added. Revised to only work with Blocks in the current space (i.e. paper space / model space). Added setting of FILLMODE to 0 so that hatch is hidden making it easier to see the colour of Blocks containing solid hatch.
1.03 - 14/04/16: Minor update to Under Review colouring
1.02 - 25/03/16: Added identification of Blocks that relate to specification items that are Under Review
1.01 - 04/03/16: Reduced reporting
1.00 - 26/01/16: Initial version.