User enhancement requests

[johnwarburton]

You should be able to accomplish what you want with the naming assistant: there are two basic strategies, and which you choose depends on how you want the tree control to look.

Thanks for this Paul, but I see a massive obstacle to both approaches (though the first option I would choose to discount anyway).

I have posted copies of my current config files on the Name Assistants thread on this forum. The file contains 1570 entries which, even after discounting the numerous comment lines, is a lot. In fact, I guess only the lines ending with ~ need to be considered, but if I read your post correctly I would have to duplicate each of these and add ?*|~| in each case, AND remove the ~ from the end of the existing entries?

I'll give it a shot, though!

[johnwarburton]

You should be able to accomplish what you want with the naming assistant: there are two basic strategies, and which you choose depends on how you want the tree control to look.

Alternatively, if you don't want the "Suffix for kind of pipe" to appear in the tree you can go

|Wires|Wires
Wires?*|~|Suffix for kind of wire

In which case the second line will not appear in the tree, but will still act to tell MicroGDS to accept layer names which match "Wires?*" if you type them.

OK. Tried it. Failed. Here is the section of code from my config file:

???01|0G-Photo-DRG-|(010) Drawing Sheets (photos)
???01|1T-Title-DRG-|(011) Drawing Titles
???01|2T-Keynt-DRG-|(012) Keynotes
???01|3T-Legnd-DRG-|(013) Legends, Symbols Keys
???01|4G-Markr-DRG-|(014) Markers, Break Marks, Leaders
???01|5G-Match-DRG-|(015) Match Lines
???01|6T-Revsn-DRG-|(016) Revision Notes and Clouds
???01|7G-Detls-DRG-|(017) Detail Enhancement
???01|8G-Scale-DRG-|(018) Scale Bars
???01??-?????-DRG-?*|~|Allow user to extend name without warning prompt

Here is a screen shot of the layer dialogue. What have I missed?

[johnwarburton]

You should be able to accomplish what you want with the naming assistant: there are two basic strategies, and which you choose depends on how you want the tree control to look.

Alternatively, if you don't want the "Suffix for kind of pipe" to appear in the tree you can go

|Wires|Wires
Wires?*|~|Suffix for kind of wire

In which case the second line will not appear in the tree, but will still act to tell MicroGDS to accept layer names which match "Wires?*" if you type them.

I am suspecting that this approach will only be succesful if the layer names are exactly the same length before the ~ appears (NOT always the case) OR we would have to explicitly expand all of the possible layer names that can be constructed as literal strings without using wildcards. Don't even think of taking me there !!!

[jpsa]

OK. Tried it. Failed. What have I missed?

I don't know

I took exactly those lines, added a

|AAA01|Start

line to get things started and my LNA looks like the attached image.

What version of MicroGDS are you using? Can I have a copy of the precise layer naming assistant config file which illustrates the problem, please (email to microgds_support_data), and I'll investigate.

[jpsa]

Can I have a copy of the precise layer naming assistant config file which illustrates the problem, please (email to microgds_support_data), and I'll investigate.

John kindly supplied the requested information, and the problem occurs in cases where the extra bit can be typed but where some cases are provided explicitly, e.g.,

|Wires|Wires
Wires|240v|Mains wires
Wires?*|~|Suffix for kind of wire

I'm tempted to say that a naming assistant rule should not be shown in the tree if the expansion is empty or just '~'. Does that sound as if it would do the trick?

[johnwarburton]

I'm tempted to say that a naming assistant rule should not be shown in the tree if the expansion is empty or just '~'. Does that sound as if it would do the trick?

That sounds like it would do the job perfectly (or possibly have the description field contain a keyword that forces the entry to be hidden - I can think of lots of cases where that feature would be useful!)

[johnwarburton]

Layer name assistants tend to be complex beasts. The more useful they are, the more complex they seem to be. As a result, testing and validating them can be a major task - very time consuming.

I have on my to-do list the task of writing a stand-alone VB application to read the contents of name assistants and produce lists of all of the possible names that they will output as a means of validating them. For example - the recursive entries that are so easy to create by accident would be highlighted by this approach.

If this validation capability could be built in to MicroGDS it would save us a lot of blood, sweat and tears. At present, the only way to validate a name assistant is to use the window editor and create a window with each and every possible layer and object!

[johnwarburton]

The intersect command projects and connects two lines or arcs, but allows no options on how the connection is made. For example, it is a common requirement for the connected lines to have a fillet.

The fillet command will only insert a fillet where there is already a vertex along a continuous path where two straight segments are connected.

It seems to me that combining the two actions into a single command would be a good idea. Probably the best approach would be to create a new command that intersects two segments and inserts a fillet in a single operation.

[johnwarburton]

Classic GDS has an option on the trace command that allows adjacent segments to be filleted as you trace from point to point. As I recall, this was invoked by the Tab key.

A similar feature in MicroGDS would be handy.

[johnwarburton]

The Change Radius command currently requires the user to specify the new radius required.

An option to use a pos on the drawing to define a point to which the existing arc radius should be adjusted would be a useful enhancement of this command. This would avoid the need to query the drawing (and possibly construct temporary graphics) to establish the new radius required - especially useful if the new radius is not a nice round figure.