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View Full Version : Drafting - Improve Plotting of Annotation Drawings


John Scheffel
02-18-2003, 10:52 AM
I just discovered some odd behavior when plotting Annotation drawings from Drafting 11.6. When you load Annotation drawings with multiple sheets, you can now view and work on one sheet at a time. This version also includes some Annotation menus which allow you to modify the drawings without losing associativity. This is a nice improvement in handling of Annotation drawings.

However, if you plot the drawing it will plot all the sheets overlaid on top of each, similar to how they appeared in the viewport in previous versions. This will happen if you use the Output/All (ALL) or Box (TWO_PTS) options, even if you set the Current Show (AS_DISPLAYED) option. The only method I have found which plots only the current sheet is to set Output/Viewport (CURRENT_WINDOW).

Although the Viewport method will allow people to plot the current sheet, this is not obvious and the plotting behavior can be confusing for people who load Annotation drawings into Drafting and are still adjusting to the new Annotation support.

So the enhancement request is better support of plotting multiple sheet drawings in Drafting. I'm not sure of the best way to do this, but an Output/Sheet option which plots only the current sheet would be less confusing. Beyond this, it would be nice if the Output/All option plotted all the sheets one page per sheet. Some method of plotting selected sheets in one shot might also be useful.

Wolfgang
02-20-2003, 11:10 AM
I'm sure you already know it.. but for read-only-users:

do you know about the OSDM-Goody "Arrange sheets in SD ANNOTATION"? This might help a bit for the plot problem you mentioned. But you have to do this is in OSDM before storing the drawing...

John Scheffel
04-03-2003, 03:20 PM
See this thread (http://www.cocreateusers.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4490) for a macro which provides a workaround until a better method is added to Drafting.

John Scheffel
04-25-2003, 09:22 AM
Someone here discovered that there is a button to print the current sheet of a drawing in Drafting 11.60B. I am not sure if it existed in previous 11.60 versions since I no longer have access to them.

In the Windows or Mixed UI, open the Annotation toolbar (right click any toolbar to get a checkbox list). In the Annotation toolbar click Drawing, Sheet, Print Current Sheet. Note that in "2D Access" the Print Current Sheet button is directly on the Annotation toolbar.

In the Classic UI, click MODULES, Annotation, DRAWING, PLOT SHEET.

Both UIs run a new macro named "Plot_current_sheet", which can be called from other macros. However, there is one issue with using this feature under the Windows UI. It just opens a standard Print Manager window which does not allow you to set all the print options as you can from WUI_PRINT (opened by File,Print). This means you must set the print parameters using a standard drawing print first. This is not an issue with the Classic UI since you can preset all the PLOT parameters from the std PLOT menu.

I would also like to see this funtion placed in a more obvious location. It should be an option in the WUI_PRINT form, not a special button hidden 2 levels deep in a toolbar that people may never open. So I will not flag this enhancement request as done since this is an area that still needs some improvement.