From Cheap Tricks, February 92 Issue Published By: Shu Associates, Inc. 120 Trenton St., Melrose, MA 02176-3714 (617)662-0020 (FAX Same) eshu@world.std.com

Floppy Drive Templates

We have created a lot of curiosity in some of you out there with a number of our Cheapware templates, which are Floppy drive accessible. Instead of installing your template and symbols into your hard drive, we simply tell you to put your floppy disk into your floppy disk drive and to call up your template from the A-drive (or B-drive) by using the New Path Command and typing A:\ (or B:\). Now the template will simply load up all its symbols from your floppy. When you are done using your template, you simply take out your floppy and put it away. No mess, no fuss, and no clogging up your hard drive. But how did you do that, you ask?

It is very simple to create floppy drive templates if you understand what templates and symbols are all about and how they are organized. We refer you to our earlier discussion in our Mar '91 issue, but for those of you who weren't with us back then, we shall recap. Each symbol is stored in an individual computer file with the extension ".SM3". Understand that this file could be stored almost anyplace that reads DOS: your current path, an old path, a new path, and yes, even a floppy disk. Now the major concept to understand is that your template file is simply a directory of where these symbol files are located. They DO NOT contain any of the symbols themselves. They only contain the names of the symbol files and the path where they are located. If you move your symbol files to a new path or directory, your old template file will not be able to find your symbols and all you will see is a blank box where the symbol should be displayed.

Using the EDIT command in DOS or your text editor (a word processing program, or sometimes your shell program will also have a built-in text editor) load up one of your template files (with the extension ".TPL"). What you will see is something like the following:

DataCAD template file. version 01.10.
2
6
*
C:\DATACAD\SYM\RESIDENC\LAVATORY
C:\DATACAD\SYM\RESIDENC\BATHGRUP
C:\DATACAD\SYM\RESIDENC\WARDROB1
C:\DATACAD\SYM\RESIDENC\WARDROB2
C:\DATACAD\SYM\RESIDENC\WC1

What this tabulation means is that your template will display as a grid 2 boxes wide by 6 boxes long, with the first five boxes displayed with symbols to be found in the paths indicated. For example, in the first box of the second row, it will look for a symbol called WARDROB1.SM3 in the path C:\DCAD5\SYM\RESIDENC.

This listing is from our RESIDENC template (RESIDENC.TPL). Our office standard is to always store the symbols for a particular template under the path

But we digress. Our object is to create a floppy drive template. Copy your template (the TPL file) to the floppy. Now copy all the symbol files from the template to the floppy. (No subdirectory on your floppy is required, unless you want to be extra organized.) Now call up your TPL file from the floppy on your text editor. Using a universal replace command, or by doing it manually, you might alter the earlier example as follows:

DataCAD template file. version 01.10.
2
6
*
A:\LAVATORY
A:\BATHGRUP
A:\WARDROB1
A:\WARDROB2
A:\WC1

(Note: for B:drive floppy drives, simply substitute "B:" for "A:")

Save this revised file back to your floppy in ASCII or Text Only format (using EDIT or Notepad.) The EDIT command does saves in ASCII automatically, but you have to be careful if you use another text editor. Now, if you were to put this floppy in to another machine (or in yours after you delete your template and symbols from the hard disk), you could call up the template directly from the floppy. In the Template menu, Hit New Path, and type in A:\ (or B:\), hit your return, and you should see your floppy template displayed. When you select it, it will display your symbols (by loading them from the floppy) in the normal fashion.

Floppy drive templates are terrific for templates which are used only on occasion or else templates which require a lot of hard disk room. It's also a good way for those of you who have trouble saving your symbols to logical locations to get organized with your templates.

Reprint from Cheap Tricks, February '92 All rights reserved