drawing tools | CADcaster

December 6, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

place circle settings We will start discussing details on our drawing tools. We are going to discuss some basic drawing tools, and how to use it with tool settings. The basic elements are linear, circle, and polygon elements.

Using tool settings

We use tool settings to change the element parameters. Tool settings will show you all available parameter for active tool. When you activate place circle, it will show you parameters for circle. When you activate place line, it will show you all parameters for line. Not just for drawing, it’s also used for modify and view navigation tools.
Activate place circle and take a look at the tool settings for circle. You can see that there is a diameter parameter. But if you have been playing with MicroStation tools for a while, you’ll find out that you don’t need to input diameter when placing circle. You can simply use AccuDraw to place two data points. So how can tool settings and AccuDraw can work together?
They talk to each other. Let’s try to activate place circle from navigation bar. Place a data point anywhere on your screen as the circle center point. Now move your pointer. As we have discussed before, the value in AccuDraw will be updated instantly. You can move your pointer, type the radius, and click data point to place the circle. But don’t define the second data point yet! See your tool settings. The diameter value is also changing.
Click reset to cancel this circle placement. Now, with the place circle still active, lock the diameter value in your tool settings, and type the diameter value.

Move your pointer to drawing area. Now you can see a circle attached to your pointer! If you defined the diameter (or radius) before defining data point, you can click only once to place the circle. Very useful if you have to place many circle with the same radius.

Linear Elements

We will discuss more about circle later. Now, let’s discuss about linear elements.

Place SmartLine

We’ve been using SmartLine a couple of times. It’s named SmartLine, but we can place several elements type just using this tool. The elements can be:

Line, if it only has one line segment
Arc, if it only has one arc segment
Line string, if it has several line segments
Complex chain, if it has several line and arc segments
Complex shape, if it’s a closed element

A SmartLine can have arc and lines. You can change the segment type from line to arc and vice versa during placing the element. You can also change the vertex type to rounded or chamfered.
place smartline tool settings

A little tip: You can quickly change the top most parameter in tool settings by pressing [~] in your keyboard. See the animation for creating the profile below.

SmartLine Exercise
You can download an old animation here. They will show you how those profile were created. I created it using a free recorder when I still use V8 XM. Yes, it’s executable files, they have their own player.

Place Line

Another linear element that we can consider as basic is ‘place element’. You only can place a simple line using this tool. Every line you created only has one segment. You create four line segments, then it will be four separate lines.
Let’s take a look at the tool settings. There are only two parameters: length and angle. Try to lock the value for these two before you place your line.

What happen? You only need to place one data point, and it already has the length and angle you wanted!

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Source: CAD Notes – Using Tool Settings and Linear Elements
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Precise Input: Using AccuSnap

November 7, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

When we place drawing elements, we need to reference to an existing point. We need to place a point exactly at the end of a line, midpoint of a line, center point of a circle, et cetera. In MicroStation, we use AccuSnap to do this. You have used AccuSnap for snapping your data point to a line end before, now let’s get to know it better.

AccuSnap only active when MicroStation is asking you for a data point. It means when you need to place a drawing elements or define a data point during modify or manipulate your drawing elements. When MicroStation doesn’t ask you for data point, AccuSnap is not active.

By default, the AccuSnap mode is set to find key points. Key points are different for each object type. For example, key points for lines are the end points and mid point. Key points for circle are at its octants (every 45 deg) and its center point.

Open a new drawing, create several objects in it. Rectangle, lines, circle, arc, et cetera. Don’t worry about their size. We just use it to understand the AccuSnap behavior. We will do a drawing exercise on the next tutorial.

Try to activate a drawing tools. Let’s use Place SmartLine. Move your pointer close to those objects and see when and where the AccuSnap appear.

Overriding Snap Mode

During the design, we need to use more snap tools than just the key points. Don’t worry, MicroStation has enough snap tools you can use. You can override the default snap mode by clicking the AccuSnap button on status bar.

Or if you feel more comfortable with toolbar, you can show the button bar. Click the AccuSnap button and select button bar.

How come the toolbar only showing a few snap mode, not as many as in snap menu? Right click on the toolbar, and activate other mode you may need. Or, simply click show all. There you go; you have the entire snap mode you can use!

Active Snap and Default Snap

How do we know which snap mode is active? Active snap is shown as a pushed button. When you see the center point button is pushed, then the active snap is center point. But there is more.

See the key point snap button? It’s also pushed, and it’s shown in gray. The grayed button means it’s the default snap mode.

Activate Place SmartLine. Try to override the snap mode to center point. Click on a circle to snap to its center. After defining a data point, the key point will be back as the active snap mode. This is very useful if you only need to change the snap mode for a point, and still want the key point as default snap mode.

On the snap menu, the default snap mode will have a blank circle on the left of it. While the active snap mode have a filled circle.

If you need to change the default snap mode, you can do one of these:

Double click on a button in snap toolbar
Click the snap button on status bar, hold [shift] and click on a snap mode you want.

If you have finished playing around with the default snap mode, make sure to switch it back to key point.

Tentative Snap

Do you remember which button is the tentative snap button? Yes, press the left and right button together. I know some of you may not feel comfortable with it. I will show you how you can choose another button for at the end of this post. Let’s just use the default for now.

If you move your pointer close enough to a key point, you will see this point.

It’s almost like the snap point, but it’s not yellow. It’s a dashed cross. If you move your pointer closer to that point, then it will change to snap point.

Let’s move your pointer until you see the tentative point. Click the tentative button. MicroStation will show you which point you are attempt to snap. The tentative point becomes a large white cross, and MicroStation highlight the object. If you see it is snapping to correct point, click data point to accept it.

This is important if you have a lot of objects in your drawing. You can review whether you are snapping to correct object or not. If it’s not, click reset (right click) to cancel it, and try it again.

Changing the Tentative Snap Button Assignment

If you still feel uncomfortable with clicking two buttons at once, you can change the button assignment.

Access MicroStation menu: Workspace>Button Assignments… MicroStation will open a dialog box. Click Remap Buttons.

In button mappings dialog box, select the tentative button. As you can see, currently it’s invoked by left button – right button chord. Move your pointer to button definition area. Click any button you want to assign a new button.

Many MicroStation users use mid button as tentative point. It’s a long story You will lose the pan functionality from the mid button. But you still can use pan scroll by pressing [shift] + data point. It’s not exactly the same with pan view. If you don’t like the pan scroll, you can change the button assignment from pan scroll to pan view. It’s your choice!