Geometry Menus: (Part 1)

This section discusses changes and enhancements that have been made to the various overwrite and flyout menus for the GEOMETRY tools.

LINES Overwrite Menu

LINES Main Flyout Menu




Special Features:

• The LINES menu layout was revised to create separate drawing and editing sections and many icons were revised to more closely match systemwide graphic standards.
  
  
• The graphics for AFFIX, SEGMENT and HEAL were similar and thus confusing. Text labels were added to the buttons to make their functions clearer.
  
  
• The FILLET tool was moved to be the right-click command for the CHAMFER button.
  
  
• The right-click command for spline lines skips the prompt and automatically sets the spline tension to 1.0 and displays a reminder message.
  
  
• The LINES flyout menu was redesigned and expanded.
  
  
• The following tools were added to the LINES menu:
  
  

  New Menu Button	Right-Click Function
  INSERT LINE	Display SNAP Flyout Menu
  OFFSET CHASE	Same
  BREAK MULTIPLE LINES	Same
  AFFIX POINTS TO A LINE	DISPLAY DATA POINTS
  SEGMENT LINE	Same
  HEAL BROKEN LINE	Same
  INSERT INTERSECTION	INSERT SINGLE POINT
  MAKE SPLINE LINE	Same





Line Toolbar Assignment:

On the LINE SELECT menu, selecting the TOOLBAR button produces the following prompt:


 LINE SELECT TOOLBAR Button Prompt

This new prompt offers a choice of line placement commands to be associated with the specified line style. Each command will automatically load the line status menu so that line parameters may be reviewed and adjusted. The desired option may be selected using the mouse or indicated by entering the associated number from the keyboard. An appropriate button label will be placed on the toolbar to describe the option selected.

RI Overwrite Menu		RI Main Flyout Menu
RI Status Menu




Special Features:

• Snap flyout menus were added as right-click options for all RI placement commands.
  
  
• The MORE button was eliminated and all of the tools previously contained on the pop-up PLACE RI menu were incorporated directly on the REPEATED ITEMS menu.
  
  
• The RI flyout menu was redesigned and significantly expanded.
  
  
• There was an annoying problem that has been fixed. Previously, if a RI was selected from the REPEATED ITEMS menu and then later a RI FILL pattern was used, upon returning to the REPEATED ITEMS menu one would find that the previously selected RI had been replaced by the pattern RI. Of course the same problem also happened in reverse with the pattern RI being changed by the REPEATED ITEMS menu. There is now some autonomy for both the PATTERNS and the REPEATED ITEMS menus as each remembers the RI name and library being used and automatically resets the proper values upon returning to that menu.
  
  
• The RI ROTATION tools from the old 3D menus were abandoned in ARRIS 2001. They have been restored here. Use these tools to fine-tune the rotation of any RI. They work in conjunction with the rotational increment (ROT INC) value displayed immediately below on the RI status menu. Refer to on-line help for additional information on using these tools.
  
  
• The following tools were added to the REPEATED ITEMS menu:
  
  

  New Menu Button	Right-Click Function
  RI PLACEMENT OFFSET	Toggle RI Placement Offset ON/OFF
  RI NODE SNAP	Display SNAP Flyout Menu
  PLACE RI RELATIVE TO EXIST. RI	Same
  ATTRIBUTE EDIT	Reposition individual attributes on drawing
  ATTRIBUTE REPORT	Same





RI Attributes:

Beginning in ARRIS 8.0, attributes have been more closely integrated as sub-elements of repeated items. In ARRIS++, a number of improvements have been made to make working with the new attribute system easier.  RI ATTRIBUTE Button  SET RI ATTRIBUTE Menu When an attributal RI is selected, the ATTR label will appear on the status menu to the right of the RI name. When this label is displayed, left-clicking on the button will toggle the display of the SET RI ATTRIBUTE pop-up menu. This can be a convenient way to quickly check the status of the attributes for the current RI and then dismiss the menu from the screen. Occasionally it is desirable to place an attributal RI without its associated attributes. This can accomplished by selecting the SUPPRESS PLACEMENT OF ATTRIBUTES button on the pop-up menu. However, an easier method is to simply right-click on the ATTR button to toggle attribute placement on/off. When attributes are being suppressed, the ATTR button will be greyed out as shown in the image below.  RI ATTRIBUTE Button  SET RI ATTRIBUTE Menu When the attribute entity is selected on the EDIT pull-down menu, the special editing commands (seen below) are displayed at the bottom of the menu. Some attribute editing commands were honoring the current CAPS mode setting while others were not, making attribute editing totally unpredictable. The EDIT VALUES and CHANGE VALUE commands have now been fixed to honor the current CAPS mode setting.  EDIT Menu Special Attribute Editing Buttons





RI Status Menu:


 Partial RI Status Menu

The 2D/3D button was enhanced to update the display of the RIs in the REPEATED ITEM SELECT menu if it is currently displayed. Previously, the menu would simply be erased from the screen. However, this means that existing RIs on the drawing will not be updated if the display mode is changed while the SELECT menu is on the screen. This can easily be addressed by right-clicking on the 2D/3D box at any time to get the screen to update.


 Partial RI Status Menu

A new box was added to the status menu which shows an image of the current repeated item. This will be displayed in either the RI's native color(s) or in the current color, depending upon how the RI was originally created. Clicking on this box immediately displays the REPEATED ITEM SELECT pop-up menu where another RI may be selected from an existing RI catalog or library.


 Partial RI Status Menu

The repeated items status menu was further enhanced to display the current CURSOR DRAG mode as well as the ROTATIONAL INCREMENTS value used by the RI ROTATION system.





Automatic Reset of Scale and Rotation:

In standard ARRIS, when a new repeated item is selected for use, the RI SCALE FACTOR and RI ROTATION remain at their current settings. Typically, these values are not appropriate for the new RI. If this behavior is not what you prefer, then there is option on the ARRIS++ OPTIONS menu that may be used to force ARRIS to automatically reset the RI scale back to a value of 1 and the RI rotation back to a value of 0 each time a new repeated item is chosen. The selection you make on the ARRIS++ OPTIONS menu determines the initial behavior when ARRIS is started.


 RI Status Menu Scale and Rotation

Two new buttons have been added to the RI status menu immediately above the buttons that manually reset the scale to 1 and rotation to 0. These new buttons display the current automatic reset mode for these values. If the buttons read ON, then each time a new RI is loaded the scale for the new RI will be reset to 1 and the rotation is reset to 0. Clicking on either of these buttons will toggle this feature to OFF and the buttons will be displayed in darker color to indicate this status. In this case, when a new RI is selected, the scale and rotation will remain set to their current values.


 RI Status Menu Scale and Rotation

These buttons can be used at any time to set the behavior that is desired. Regardless of how this is set on the RI status menu, the next time ARRIS is started it will use the default setting that you specified on the ARRIS++ OPTIONS menu.

Note that the automatic setting of the scale and rotation are either both ON or both OFF. You cannot set them independently.





RI Scale Factor:

When RI SCALE FACTOR is selected from the RI status menu, additional prompts have been added.

 RI Scale Factor Prompt

Numeric selections for 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 4.0 and 10.0 have been provided in addition to the standard x only, y only and z only options.

In addition, three additional prompts have been added to easily allow the RI to be placed, mirrored about either the X, the Y, or both the XY-axes. The new mirroring options can be selected from the keyboard by entering either mx, my, or mb. (Note that mxy can also be entered as an alternative to mb.)





RI Origin Offsets:

A series of odd problems occur in ARRIS when the repeated item origin offset values are accidentally changed to some unexpected value. Unfortunately, there had been no easy way to view and set these values. With the release of ARRIS 8.0, new SET and CLR OFFSET buttons were included on the repeated item status menu for this purpose. These tools have been enhanced to make them more useful.

RI OFFSETS Button: OFF

RI OFFSETS Button: ON


When the RI X, Y and Z-axes offset values are all set to zero, the OFFSET box on the status menu displays off, as seen in the left image above. When one or more axis offsets are non-zero, then the box displays on with a red warning background as seen in the right image above.

Left-clicking on the OFFSET box displays the RI ORIGIN OFFSETS pop-up menu.


 RI ORIGIN OFFSETS Menu

This menu displays the current offsets to be applied to any new repeated item placed on the drawing. Each of the three axis values may be set or cleared individually or the SET XYZ OFFSETS button may be used to set all three axes values at one time.

The EXIT button dismisses the menu, using the offset values specified.

The CLEAR OFFSETS button may be used to reset all offset value back to zero. By right-clicking on the OFFSETS box on the status menu, it is also possible to immediately reset the offsets to zero without having to display the RI ORIGIN OFFSETS menu.

Right-clicking on the [X] icon in the upper-right corner allows the menu to be repositioned on the screen.

Note that the RI origin offset should not be confused with the RI Placement Offset. Setting a value for the origin offset actually changes the location of the RI's origin in relation to its graphical content. Setting a RI placement offset is just a temporary offset handle used to position the RI on the drawing. Once the RI is placed, it will have its normal origin (or an offset origin if one was in effect during the RI's placement.)





RI Placement Offset:

RI PLACEMENT OFFSET Menu




The RI PLACEMENT OFFSET Menu was completely redesigned to provide the following improvements:



• Detailed on-line help information was written for the entire menu.
  
  
• All menu buttons now support right-click customization capability.
  
  
• A new box was added to display the actual RI ORIGIN OFFSET currently in effect. If this value is non-zero, the offset value will be displayed on a red background, similar to the way the OFFSETS button is displayed on the RI status menu. Left-clicking on this box allows the origin offset value to be changed, while right-clicking on the box immediately resets the origin offset back to (0,0,0).
  
  
• Clicking on the PLACEMENT OFFSET box now allows the placement offset value to be entered numerically from the keyboard, just as if the OFFSET button had been selected. Right-clicking on this box toggles the current placement offset value on/off.
  
  
• Right-clicking on the menu title executes the initialization command for the menu to redisplay the contents should it ever become garbled.
  
  
• A bug was fixed that did not allow the RI to properly display within the window if an origin offset value was in effect.

Whenever the placement point differs from the actual RI origin, the PLACE OFFSET button will remain highlighted to indicate this condition. In addition, right-clicking on the button will toggle the RI placement value on ...

Offset ON

RI Placement Point Offset Message: ON




... and off.

Offset OFF

RI Placement Point Offset Message: OFF




This toggling feature is useful when placing multiple copies of the same RI and it is desired to occasionally select an alternate insertion point and then quickly switch back to the standard origin.

Notes:

• When a RI placement offset value is set, it will continue to be in effect for the current RI until it is manually deactivated. This differs from standard ARRIS where each time a RI placement session is ended any placement offset value is automatically cleared. If the original behavior is desired, then set and export the environment variable "CJ_RIPLCOFF=RESET" in your .profile or .cshrc file (UNIX) or in the arris.ini file (Windows).
  
  
• Previously, this tool was called ORIGIN OFFSET which was incorrect. The actual origin offset is controlled by the OFFSETS buttons on the repeated item status menu or by the ORIGIN OFFSET box at the top of this menu.
  
  
• The RI placement offset should not be confused with the RI Origin Offset. Setting a value for the origin offset actually changes the location of the RI's origin in relation to its graphical content. Setting a RI placement offset is just a temporary offset handle used to position the RI on the drawing. Once the RI is placed, it will have its normal origin (or an offset origin if one was in effect during the RI's placement.)




RI Tools:

REPEATED ITEM TOOLS Menu




The REPEATED ITEM TOOLS menu has been completely redesigned to offer the following enhanced features:




• The menu now offers comprehensive on-line help.
  
  
• Each menu button now supports right-click customization capability.
  
  
• Previously, each time the menu was loaded, the NODE DISPLAY and ORIGIN DISPLAY options were automatically turned OFF. This meant that these had to be constantly reset before one of the DISPLAY functions could be selected. ARRIS++ now remembers the selections and automatically resets the menu to the previous configuration, making the use of this feature much more convenient.
  
  
• When setting a new NODES or ORIGIN COLOR, the menu would prompt to enter a color number only. This has now been changed to display the pop-up color selection menu, making a sensible color choice possible.
  
  
• The menu can be repositioned on the screen by right-clicking on the [X] ikon in the upper-right corner. Previously, when the menu was moved it did no reinitialize itself, causing most of the displayed information to be lost. This problem has now been corrected.
  
  
• A new RI ARCHIVE button was added to execute the :riarch command which is used to archive all RIs in the current drawing to a new library which may be stored or exported with the database.
  
  
• A new RI LIB EDITOR button was added to provide access to the new ARRISplus tool described below.
  
  
• A new RI LIB MANAGER button was added to provide access to the ARRIS REPEATED ITEM LIBRARY MANAGER pop-up menu.

  Tip:

  Left-clicking on the SETUP button is a shortcut for accessing the RI LIBRARY MANAGER utility without first having to load the REPEATED ITEM TOOLS menu.





Repeated Item Toolbar Assignment:


 RI TOOLBAR Button

On the REPEATED ITEM SELECT menu, the TOOLBAR button has been enhanced. Selecting this button now produces the following prompt:


 RI TOOLBAR Button Prompt

Select option #1 if you wish to use the specified repeated item as a toolbar button icon (i.e., label) while leaving the current toolbar button command as is. This is a feature that is not available in standard ARRIS but can be a very useful aid when creating customized toolbars. For example, you might place a command on the toolbar that has a text label. You can later search for an appropriate RI icon and easily attach it to that button using this method.

Select option #2 if you wish to place the specified repeated item on a toolbar button along with an associated command that will place single instances of that RI on the drawing. This function is similar to what occurs in standard ARRIS, but has been enhanced so that each time the toolbar button is selected, the repeated item status menu will automatically be displayed so that the RI scale, rotation, offsets, etc. may be examined and changed.

Also, unlike standard ARRIS, the repeated item image will be displayed on the toolbar using appropriate menu color(s) rather than whatever the currently active color happens to be. In general, this makes RIs used as button labels more readable and consistent.





ARRISplus Features:

If the optional ARRISplus module is installed, then the following features are available:

Repeated Item Library Editor:




RI LIBRARY EDITOR Menu      (Click on image for larger view in pop-up window)




If the optional ARRISplus module is installed on the system, then selecting the RI LIBRARY EDITOR button from the REPEATED ITEM TOOLS menu will display the RI LIBRARY EDITOR pop-up menu which provides a graphical means of managing the contents of various repeated item libraries.

The RI LIBRARY EDITOR menu has been enhanced over that shipped with the standard ARRISplus distribution. In addition to minor redesigns to the layout, the menu now offers full right-click customization capabilities and provides on-line help for all functions.

Refer to the ARRISplus documentation for additional information on how to fully utilize this tool.

Tip:

Right-clicking on the SETUP button is a shortcut for accessing the RI LIBRARY EDITOR utility without first having to load the REPEATED ITEM TOOLS menu.

SOLIDS Overwrite Menu

SOLIDS Main Flyout Menu




Special Features:

• The menu layout was revised.
  
  
• Snap flyout menus were added as right-click options for all solids placement commands.
  
  
• The SOLIDS flyout menu was redesigned and significantly expanded.

SLAB/PATH Overwrite Menu

SLAB/PATH Main Flyout Menu




Special Features:

• The menu layout was revised.
  
  
• Snap flyout menus were added as right-click options for all slab and path placement commands.
  
  
• The SLAB/PATH flyout menu was redesigned and significantly expanded.
  
  
• The following tools were added to the SLAB/PATH menu:
  
  

  New Menu Button	Right-Click Function
  EXTRUSION START/STOP	Same

CURVES Overwrite Menu

CURVES Main Flyout Menu




Special Features:

• The CURVES menu layout was revised to create separate drawing and editing sections, many icons were revised to more closely match systemwide graphic standards, and the title was changed from CIRCLES to CURVES. Editing functions similar to those on the LINES menu were placed in the same positions to make locating them more predictable.
  
  
• The graphics for AFFIX and SEGMENT were similar and thus confusing. Text labels were added to the buttons to make their functions clearer.
  
  
• The sigmac command for POLYGON was enhanced and renamed from :mn_pol to :mn_pol2. This command now prompts for the polygon construction mode and accepts either inscribed or circumscribed, providing greated flexibility and control over how polygons are created.
  
  
• The CHAMFER tool was added as the right-click command for the FILLET button to be consistent with this relationship on the LINES menu.
  
  
• The CURVES flyout menu was redesigned and expanded.
  
  
• The TRIM/EXTEND ARC commands were revised to perform an entity operation upon a left-click and to perform a distance operation upon a right-click. This matches the usage for the TRIM/EXTEND command on the LINES menu.
  
  
• The following tools were added to the CURVES menu:
  
  

  New Menu Button	Right-Click Function
  AFFIX POINTS TO AN ARC	DISPLAY DATA POINTS
  POLYGON CONSTRUCTION  (enhanced)	Same
  SEGMENT AN ARC	Same
  TANGENT BETWEEN 2 CURVES	Same
  TANGENT BETWEEN POINT & CURVE	Same
  TANGENT CURVE BETWEEN 2 LINES	Same
  TOGGLE BETWEEN POLYGON & CIRCLE	Same

  
  




Polygon Construction:

• Based upon an idea developed by Robert Trinidad ( rtrinidad@lakeflato.com) and discussed on the ARRIS mailing list, new options were added to the polygon construction routine to specify whether the polygon is to be inscribed or circumscribed about an imaginary circle. (Previously, inscribed was the only method supported.)

  Polygon

  Polygon Construction

  
  

  An addition default EXIT prompt was also added. These options may also be selected from the keyboard by simply typing an 'e',  'i'  or  'c'.

  Since a new prompt was added to the command, this revised sigmac was renamed from :mn_pol to :mn_pol2 to avoid conflicts.

  Another internal change was made to this sigmac which now allows the number of polygon sides (POL) to be changed on the status menu while the :mn_pol2 is running, making the command much more flexible than the original.

  Thanks to Robert for this useful idea.





Curve Toolbar Assignment:

On the CIRCLE SELECT menu, selecting the TOOLBAR button produces the following prompt:


 CIRCLE SELECT TOOLBAR Button Prompt

This new prompt offers a choice of curve placement commands to be associated with the specified text style. Each command will automatically load the line status menu so that line parameters may be reviewed and adjusted. The desired option may be selected using the mouse or indicated by entering the associated number from the keyboard. An appropriate button label will be placed on the toolbar to describe the option selected.

CEIL PLANS Overwrite Menu

CEILING PLANS Main Flyout Menu




Special Features:

• For consistency, the CEILING PLANS pop-up menu was replaced with the standard overwrite menu seen above (Hey, we did it first!) and the tools were grouped into sections for commands, light fixtures and track fixtures.
  
  
• Created a new CEILING PLANS flyout menu as there is none in standard ARRIS.
  
  
• When right-clicking on the TOOLS button, changed the pop-up EDIT/COPY menu from lines to patterns which should typically be more useful when working with ceiling grids.
  
  
• Added a right-click command to the CUT GRID AT LIGHTS button to allow an arbitrarily shaped hole to be cut into a ceiling grid.
  
  
• The following tools were added to the CEILING PLANS menu:
  
  

  New Menu Button	Right-Click Function
  MOVE ORIGIN	Same

See Also:

• Geometry Menus (Part 2)
• Notation Menus
• Main Menus