User enhancement requests

[ColinMcNab]

Hi,
does anyone know of a way to project a 2d line onto a 3d surface. In the absence of a 3d offset command I have been having to trace offsets and then move each vertice to the correct Z height...It strikes me that this would be a good enhancement...ie to shadow a line onto a 3d surface rather than just the Z plane.

[ColinMcNab]

Another one.....
the ability to have the x,y,z restraint buttons work modally ie they stay locked until you unlock them so for example if you wanted to do a lot of edits to vertices only in the Z plane you could lock the Z restraint and know that all your hits are only going to extract or supply the Z component.

[ColinMcNab]

what about having the trace offset as a dropdown list of previous values for the current session. Or lets go to town have all the user input dimension entries like rectangle etc. , have dropdown lists with previous entries.

[ColinMcNab]

The standard query panel should have Radius shown if the selected line is a curve. Just now you have to explicitly query a graphic to tell if it is a straight line or a very large radius curve.

[jpsa]

The standard query panel should have Radius shown if the selected line is a curve.

A more precise specification would have to be something like

The property dialog should show «straight» if every segment of every selected line is straight, it should show the radius if every segment of every selected line has the same radius. Otherwise, if there are any selected lines, show «mixed».

Speaking personally, I wouldn't find that useful often enough to warrant the extra space it would take on the property dialog.

[ColinMcNab]

What about the ability to swap the cursor Icons ....I'm constantly getting fooled by the subtle difference between the join cursor icon and the delete line....or just make these two more different !!
If you are doing a lot of repetitive tasks switching between one command and another its important to know which command you are in at first glance, especially as the buttons are sometimes a wee bit sticky ie they sometimes dont hear the click when you press them ;o)

[ColinMcNab]

A more precise specification would have to be something like

The property dialog should show «straight» if every segment of every selected line is straight, it should show the radius if every segment of every selected line has the same radius. Otherwise, if there are any selected lines, show «mixed».

Speaking personally, I wouldn't find that useful often enough to warrant the extra space it would take on the property dialog.

Point taken regarding the fact that a primitive could contain more than one type of line but I dont think one more line on the dialouge is here nor there.

However I am working just now on a road scheme with data from someone else and the data is sometimes very short segments of curves and sometimes faceted curves, the curves are so large its nearly impossible to tell visually whether you have selected a curve or a straight line. Previously when you selected a single segment graphic with the query box open the system told you imediately if it had a radius, without coming out of the current command or having to action an inline command. Now this is not the case and is therfor in my opinion less usefull in these circumstances.

[ColinMcNab]

and another...
how about a method to glue multiple blocks together for example if you you were trying to glue a row of terraced houses together into one primitive when each was represented by a separate primitive. Easy to do by clicks if you have only a few but I've just done over 500 and my mouse arm is acheing!!
Arcview has a function I think its called dissolve which does this...basically glues everything together which can be.

[Brian Woodward]

Colin

I would ...

1. draw a box/fence around the terrace.
2. select the box/fence and terrace primitives
3. create a new temporary layer and make it current
4. Now use construct trace spaghetti with a 0 offset.

Now one of the loops created as part of this will be the one you want. Copy it to the original layer and throw away the temporary layer

Brian

[ColinMcNab]

Colin

......Now one of the loops created as part of this will be the one you want. Copy it to the original layer and throw away the temporary layer

Brian

thanks...... that would reduce the click count from about 1500 to 500 or so...what we need now is a way of only keeping the terrace ones without having to select one by one.....