A few suggestions

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debenriver
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by debenriver »

Good Morning Eric!

I'm still getting selection/attraction problems but I've tracked it down (I hope)

After testing on drawings with lines derived from either MacSurf or ClarisCAD via DXF I discovered that it was only vertical or horizontal lines that were non-selectable. Straight lines drawn at an angle were fine.

So - I made a new RealCADD drawing with a vertical line, a horizontal line and an angled line and saved it as a DXF file.

Then I opened the DXF file in RealCADD and sure enough neither the horizontal nor the vertical lines were selectable (and of course you can't draw a perpendicular from them). The angled line was just fine.

You can select the non-selectable lines with a marquee and duplicate or copy and paste them. The copies are equally non-selectable.

So it looks like it is something that happens during importing from a DXF file , which didn't happen in versions prior to b3 and b4.

I got confused with earlier drawings because a lot of the horizontal and vertical lines came from MacSurf via DXF, as polygons with just two end nodes. I convert these to lines and in earlier versions they were just like normal lines. And of course a lot of the lines in the drawing were parallels drawn from them, or duplicates of them. And because a lot of them were originally grid lines they were mostly vertical or horizontal. But these were all drawn in earlier versions of RealCADD, so they behave just like any other lines, and I really lost track of which were dxf derived and which were independently drawn!

I suppose there must be some "memory" that they were originally derived from a DXF import even through many cycles of drawing, different RealCADD versions etc etc, that these new b3 and b4 versions pick up in some way.

I hope this helps. I'm sorry if I didn't get it quite right previously, but it is confusing to say the least, and takes a bit of teasing out! And of course not every RealCADD user will be importing via dxf – it's just most everything I happen to draw comes that way :mrgreen:

Just on another note, it seems you still have to close a drawing and re-open it for RC to register the Layer layout – simply saving it doesn't seem to do it. Same if you add new Layer layouts. And the Layers window has to be open for the Layer layout menu to work - is that correct?

And I can't see that the Circle is any different in the Edit pallet?

Later Edit In fact I seem to be having trouble with vertical and horizontal lines on a drawing with the non-selectable lines on it. As soon as a new vertical or horizontal line gets close to, or I join it to, a non-selectable line it seems to become itself non-selectable. Even if I subsequently move it a long way away, it still remains non-selectable. That is very odd.

So I went back to my new RC drawing that I saved as DXF and then re-opened. If I draw a new horizontal or vertical line it is fine. But if I then pick it up and join it to the end point of one of the non-selectable lines it itself becomes non-selectable and you can't draw perpendiculars etc. And then if I subsequently move it away it remains non-selectable. By non selectable I mean with the Arrow cursor - they are selectable with a marquee or via Select All.

I tried making the lines thicker – wondering if the select tool was less sensitive – but this didn't make any difference!

Then I did a Select All and copied and pasted the whole shebang to a new drawing and then none of the vertical or horizontal lines were selectable. Angled lines and other objects were fine.

So I made yet another new drawing with horizontal, vertical and angled lines on it and copied and pasted them to the same drawing (no dxf involved). The horizontal and vertical lines became mostly non-selectable, vertical ones more so than horizontal.

I am confused :? :?

Cheers -- George
Eric Pousse
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by Eric Pousse »

George,

I understand what you say.
For the new feature to draw perpendicular lines from specific points, I have changed the accuracy of attraction on objects.
But for vertical or horizontal lines it is not good, I will work again on this...

When you select a circle or an oval, don't you have a new small picture in the Edit pallet?
Just below the word "Selected"?
Try to clic on it...

Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
Eric Pousse
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Location: Tours - France

Re: A few suggestions

Post by Eric Pousse »

George,

Beta 5 is available : RealCADD 4.71b5

I think that this version solves the problem on attraction on vertical and horizontal lines introduced in previous betas.

Sorry for that.

Thanks for your feedbacks.

Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by debenriver »

Good evening Eric!

So much better!!! Everything works as it should :D

Nothing to do with DXF etc – just most of my vertical/horizontal lines originated that way - so easy to interpret the evidence the wrong way!

I really like the new circle/oval in the Edit pallet - I was intrigued to see the little icon at the top - but I hadn't got around to trying to click it -- perfect :mrgreen:

Perpendiculars from E, C & I work very nicely - a really smooth, seamless way to do it.

I assume that you will always have to have the Layers pallet open for the Layer layout menu to function – but of course it can stay collapsed most of the time, which is fine.

Many thanks -- George
Eric Pousse
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by Eric Pousse »

Bonjour George,

I will see if the menu Layer Layout can work when the Layers pallet is closed.

Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
Eric Pousse
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by Eric Pousse »

Bonjour George,

RealCADD 4.71b6 is available.

The menu Layer Layout is active even when the layer's pallet is closed.

I have tried to do something to be able to enter the length of a line when we create it.
Now when we create a line, there is the focus on the editfield for the length in the Edit pallet.
Therefore we can enter a value quickly.

Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by debenriver »

Good evening Eric

Thank you very much indeed for the Layers change.

It is super not to have the Layers window open all the time – for me, it always seemed to be just where I wanted to draw something. The other pallets that one tends to keep open all the time fit nicely on the right hand side of my screen but there is simply no room for the Layers, so I was always dragging it about the place. Of course not everybody draws the same way, but the Layers window is inevitably a big affair because it does a lot, so it takes up a lot of screen room, even on a big screen!

The change to the lines/Edit is great and makes it very fast. But there seem to be a couple of glitches:

The snap cursors and the surface cursor no longer appear at the arriving end of the line, and mostly seem not to appear at the start end either. Snap still works, but it's hard to tell which snap you are getting etc.

The command line shortcuts for Line don't work any more so you can't switch modes.

It seems to have affected how the ⌫ delete key works if you don't enter a length – like when you draw between two snap points. Immediately after drawing the line ⌫ doesn't work – you have to click out of the Line tool altogether and then reselect the line to delete it. ⌘X still works OK immediately just like it did before. And ⌫ works fine if you have in fact entered a length in the Edit pallet. This is a pretty unimportant glitch :D

If the first two are an inevitable result of making the line box in focus as you draw the line, and are unfixable, then I guess it really isn't worth it, nice as it is.

Once again, many thanks

George
Eric Pousse
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by Eric Pousse »

George,

Yes, there is a problem with the cursor, I will see what I can do.

For the delete key, what I can do is to test if there is something to delete in the editfield, if yes the delete command is for the editfield, if not it is for the drawing.

Thanks.
Cordialement.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by debenriver »

Tha sounds great Eric. Will that fix the Command Line problem as well??

Cheers -- George :D
debenriver
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Re: A few suggestions

Post by debenriver »

Good morning Eric

There's another odd thing. If you draw a line on one layer (say from one snap point to another) where you don't want to enter a length, and then copy it to another layer, it hasn't gone into the clipboard – the line is still visible on the second layer (even though the first layer is now not visible) and the last thing in the clipboard (in the drawing I was using it was an entirely unrelated bit of text from an email) gets pasted to the Edit line box.

If you do an ⌥⌘V and select where you want to place it, it gets pasted OK. And then if you do a straight ⌘V the line gets pasted in exactly the same location as on the original layer - which was what i wanted to do. It's often very useful to be able to move stuff from one layer to another this way.

Same with ⌘X - the line is deleted from the first layer OK, but when you come to copy it to the second layer, the edit box is still on focus and (in my case) some text got pasted. If you do an ⌥⌘V and paste a copy, you can then do an ⌘V and the line gets pasted in the exact location.

Perhaps Eric the whole thing is simply a bad idea - just too complex and messing up a the whole program??? What do you think?

Cheers -- George
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