From Cheap Tricks, December 94 Issue Published By: Shu Associates, Inc. 120 Trenton St., Melrose, MA 02176-3714 (617)662-0020 (FAX Same) eshu@world.std.com

Another Top Ten Commands

We published our Top Ten Commandments in our Mar '92 issue, which highlighted the useful but little known DataCAD commands such as Change Text Contents, Match, Mask, GotoViews, Custom Scaling, and 3 Pt. Arcs. But since then, we are pleased to discover that we have found another Top Ten Commandments that are just as useful and have become an integral part of our work in DataCAD. Most of these commands we have incorporated into our practice as custom keyboard macros that allow us quick access to them. (Our DCAD.MCR file is available as Cheap Tricks Ware Disk, R115.)

1. Quick Cursor Rotate: You can quickly align your cursor to a line at any angle, then start drawing parallel and perpendicular to that line. PROCEDURE: Hit B (or b) key, select desired line with mouse button, 3rd button exit, and start drawing. To revert to ortho mode, hit B again, then F3 for cancel.

2. Quick Line Match: Paint programs have an eyedropper tool that allows you to pick any color on screen and immediately begin drawing with that color. In DataCAD, you can do the same thing by picking any linetype (or hatch or text) on screen (on any layer) and use the Identify & Set All Command to immediately put you on the right layer ready to draw with that linetype, color and spacing. PROCEDURE: Hit "I" on the keyboard for "Identify", then select entity with mouse, then SET ALL (S8) and exit to start drawing.

3. All-Purpose 3D Slab: We use the "horizontal" slab tool for slabs of all orientations because we find it the most flexible and understandable of all the 3D tools. PROCEDURE: DCAD 3D/3DEntity/Slab/Horizntl

4. 3D Orientator: The reason we can use the horizontal slab tool at any orientation is that the Edit Plane Tool allows us to get to any 3D orientation, be it elevation, section, or roof plane, quickly and easily. PROCEDURE: DCAD 3D/3D Views/Edit Plane

5. 2 Line Trim: Maybe someday the Free Trim function will steal our hearts, but until then, don't take away our 2 Line Trim which we use in many different cleanup and editing functions. Quicker and easier to use than 1 Line Trim, we often will use a convenient line as the "trimmer" then finally use 2 Line Trim one last time to return it back to it's original length. PROCEDURE: Cleanup/2LnTrim, Select first line with mouse, then second line.

6. Associative Hatch: The associative hatch makes hatching fun and flexible and you now longer have to worry about it making your drawing file huge like with regular hatch. Also the boundary polyline more flexible than you might think allowing both overlaps and voids. PROCEDURE: Hatch/Associat(turn toggle on)/Boundary and then draw the perimeter of your hatching area. You can revise hatch pattern and scale simply by making your selection changes, then hitting Begin command again.

7. Dynamic Copy: Copying is much more fun when you can do it visually and dynamically on screen. But you have to know enough to go the Move menu to do it. PROCEDURE: Move/Drag/And Copy (turn toggle on @ S1) then select item for dynamic copying.

8. Multi-Dimensional: We think it's a drag to constantly flip between horizontal and vertical dimension. For everything except multiple dimension strings, we use the Aligned setting that allows us to do both vertical, horizontal, or any orientation dimensioning without changing settings. PROCEDURE: Dmension/Linear/Aligned (F3)

9. Text Scale: A very useful feature (added with DataCAD 5) is the ability to make text size plot scale sensitive. So instead of constantly trying to figure it out in our heads, we now leave Text Size set on 3/16" or 1/8" and just remember to keep the plot scale right. PROCEDURE: Text/TxtScale (turn toggle on @ F0)

10. Rectangles Forever: We have permanently burned into our consciousness that our custom keyboard shortcut of Alt-R starts us drawing rectangles in the quick 2 point method. As long as architecture continues to have more straight lines than curves, this drawing command will alway get heavy use in our office. PROCEDURE: Polygons/Rectangle (turn toggle on @ F0).