AccuDraw

Dialog with Focus: Using MicroStation Shortcuts

December 6, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Before we continue further with MicroStation tutorial, I want to discuss about dialog with focus. You may find that sometimes it works when you use AccuDraw shortcut, but sometimes it doesn’t. The reason is, you may have the focus on other dialog. You need the focus on the AccuDraw dialog to use AccuDraw shortcut. Confused?

Understanding and Controlling the Focus

What is this focus we are talking about? In GUI, we can give input to a component that currently has the focus. An active dialog box is shown with clearer color than the inactive dialog boxes. If you open several applications, if you press [alt] + F to open file menu, then the active application will show the menu. More details in Wikipedia. MicroStation has many dialog boxes inside the application itself.
If you are an AutoCAD user, you can type AutoCAD command anywhere and anytime. Command line always has the focus. But not in MicroStation. There are several dialog can get the focus, and each of them has specific shortcut that we can use. You can see the status at the right bottom of MicroStation, at the status bar.

Home

Moving focus to home: press [F12] OR [esc]
When you see this icon, it means the focus now is at home. When focus at home, you can use the task navigation shortcut. There are some letters and numbers on the task navigation. That’s the shortcut key. You can press [1] to activate element selection. You can press [Q] to activate place linear group, then press [1] to activate the place SmartLine. It’s very useful to speed up than using mouse to activate it.

Moving focus to AccuDraw: press [F11]
When you see this icon, then you can use AccuDraw shortcut. We have discussed AccuDraw shortcut before.

Tool Settings

Moving focus to Tool Settings: press [F10]
Personally, I’m not a fan of tool settings shortcut when it has the focus. Like default Windows dialog boxes, you can see some text are underlined. Segment Type for example.
tool settings shortcuts
It means that you can press [alt] + S to change that parameter.
Tool settings can use task navigation shortcut too. And I prefer to use it. Press [esc] OR {f12] –yes, we move the focus to home- and you will see some letters near the parameters. You can press the letter to change it. I think this is more fun.
home shortcuts

Key-In

Moving focus to key-in dialog: press [F9]
We haven’t use key-ins yet. We can activate MicroStation tools by clicking our mouse above the tool icon, and apparently we can use task navigation shortcuts, and surprisingly, we can key-in the tool!
Why we would do that? Isn’t using task navigation shortcut is faster?

Sometimes, using key-in can be faster, and it can control everything. Things that you can’t control in task navigation. When you press p, then key-in will show you every tool started with p. After you type pl, then it will auto complete it with ‘place’, press [space], then it move to 2nd column. Press s then m to activate smartline. You will see options available for SmartLine in the 3rd column.
If you remember how we changed the mouse button assignment, that’s a key-in. Pan view and Pan scroll are key-ins. You can also assign key-ins to function keys [f1] to [f12]. You can see the assignment by accessing menu Workspace>Function Keys.

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Source: CAD Notes – Dialog with Focus: Using MicroStation Shortcuts
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Precise Input: Using AccuDraw

November 7, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

AccuDraw is your ultimate weapon to place drawing elements in your design files. AccuDraw can help you to place elements precisely, effectively, and efficient.

Since this tutorial is about 2D drawing, you will only see X axis and Y axis. But when you create a 3D drawing, you will see one more axis: Z axis.

You can find AccuDraw above status bar. You can tear it off and make it floats like image in this tutorial. It’s your choice.

If you’ve been playing with MicroStation for a while, you might have close AccuDraw by accident, and now wondering how you can turn it on again. I did it before You can turn it on/off by clicking Toggle AccuDraw on Primary Tools bar.

Let’s get started. Create a new file, and open it.

Rectangular Coordinate

Activate Place SmartLine by clicking the button on task navigation. Click anywhere on your drawing area. You will see AccuDraw compass on your pointer.

Try to move your mouse pointer around. You will see the X and Y value changing. Move it to the right or left of your compass. You will see the field focus is on X field. We can tell where the focus is by the highlighted field. Now move your pointer up and down near the compass. You will see the highlighted field now on Y.

The AccuDraw focus will move to field with higher value.

Now move your pointer near to X or Y axis. You will see the line is thicker and sticky to the axis. We call it indexed. Indexing will help you to draw lines parallel to X or Y axis.

Move your pointer to the right, make sure X field get the focus. Type 2 then [enter]. You will see the X is pressed down, it means that the X value is locked. The AccuDraw focus automatically switched to Y value. Now we can change the Y value. Since we want to create a horizontal line, type 0, then [enter] again. Both of you X and Y value is now locked. Click your mouse left button to define the data point. Remember, MicroStation users call the left button mouse as data point. You will see the SmartLine placed.

Now move your pointer up until Y field get the focus. Type 4 then [enter]. Move your pointer until it’s indexed to Y axis. This will change the X value to 0. No need to lock it, click data point.

You may need to zoom out to see all your drawing. Scroll your mouse, until you see what you want.

Move your pointer to the left. Pay attention that AccuDraw now have focus on Y, not X. Isn’t X axis is parallel to horizontal axis? AccuDraw compass will be rotated and follow the previous data points orientation. Don’t worry about this now. You just need to move your pointer to get the correct focus.

Move it to the left, make sure it’s indexed. Press [enter]. This will activate SmartLock. SmartLock will lock the horizontal value, which is Y value now. Move your pointer to the first data point you defined. It’s the starting point of this line. Wait until you see the yellow X symbol, and click on it. It was the snap tool. Snap tool will ensure your data point ‘snapped’ to a certain point. We have a horizontal line now.

The last line, should be a vertical line to our starting point. Snap, and click on it again. There you go! You’ve just created a rectangle with size 2×4 mm.

Polar Coordinate

During the design process, you may need to use other method to input your object. Not by X and Y value, but using distance and angle. This is known as polar coordinate. How can we use polar coordinate in MicroStation?

Easy, when AccuDraw get the focus, press [space] to change it to polar coordinate. You will see the X and Y now is changed to distance and angle.

If you need to change it back to X and Y, simply press [space] again.

AccuDraw Challenge

Here is a little challenge for you. Can you create a profile like this image below?

Tips:

As mentioned previously, AccuDraw compass follows the previous data points orientation. When you get to point (1), you need to reset the compass orientation. Press V to reset the compass to view orientation. More explanation on this later.