modifications to eliminate losing edits

[artb]

2007/01/08

Further to your statement that you are listening and are interested in what features you can add or improve upon to improve your product I will offer some comments related to editing features in your programs that would ,I believe, greatly enhance your program and remove one of the greater frustrations that I experience and I am confident that I am not alone in that area.

This relates to editing that is lost everytime you use your rotation routines, rescaling routiness and likely any other features where your program deals with relocating the entities of a drawing.

I did bring up this issue prior to my using 2002 and later 2005. Briefly I suggested that you needed to create some routines in your programs so that moving entities such as point numbers, dimensions, etc would remain where you moved them if you had to rotate the drawing or rescale the drawing rather than having them all return to the default positions thus resulting in losing all the editing that you had done to that point. The whole reason for needing these edits is to eliminate the conflict of information on the screen and, ultimately, the ensuing plans.

I was very explicit in my first effort to include point numbers, moved dimensions, and other entities. At that time I was told that this had already been looked after in the newer versions that I hadn't ,at that time, upgraded to.

When I did become involved in the 2001, 2002 and 2005 I discovered that these issues had not been addressed and was very disappointed. Voicing my disappointment I was then advised that only the editing directly related to the database dimensions was updated although my earlier questions were apparently not answered correctly.

That aside I want to impress upon you that I personally believe that it is essential that some serious consideration is needed to revamp your program so that all of the editing of point numbers, moved dimensions, etc be preserved in later routines such as rotating the database, rescaling drawings etc be preserved.

If the position of everything related to the point numbers is tied to the co-ordinate of that point it can obviously retain that relative position in the revised drawing after the rotation, rescaling etc.

I realize that this will require more memory than one common default position for all these entities but in todays world of mega memory computers, hard drives, etc I don't believe that this should be a problem.

I can assure you that this improvement would eliminate countless hours of frustration when we have to re-edit hours of a drawing because we had to utilize one of the routines that return everything to default positions.

As it currently is we are extremely hesitant to employ some of those routines unless we absolutely have to because of this unfavorable result of using it. The rotation and rescaling features are great BUT!!!!! the undesirable results of losing the prior editing makes you reluctant to use them.

I chose to put this suggestion in the User Forum as I thought this may generate some support for my suggestions (or not) as I believe that others may feel the same.

The feedback that you may get, positive or negative, from others would be a good indicator of whether this issue is a good one to pursue.

Artb

[Ed Gasbarre]

I must agree. One common problem is performing a coordinate file rotation late in the drawing process.

Example: Once lines have been labelled with bearings and distances, these values are often moved to a more suitable location along the desired line. Also, the text value may be edited to change the quadrant of a bearing or perhaps place a space between the quadrant letter and the angular value (ie from N26°26'15"E to S 26°26'15" W).

If a coordinated rotation and/or translation is applied after such editing, then all the editing is lost because the line labels revert to their original insertion point and orientation.

My current workaround is to determine my basis of bearings prior to working on the finished drawing, although sometimes a more appropriate bearing base shows up later in the project.

This is not a major issue to me, but then again my projects are relatively small. However, those working on major subdivision plats may beg to differ.

[rwhatman]

This problem has been address and it is solved.

Check with the Support Help Desk.

[artb]

At what point do we ,as users, see the solution this loss of editing that you say has been solved.

I am currently running mscad2005 and it is still an issue in that program?

[Glen Cameron]

MSCAD2005 SP#1.3:
I just moved a bearing away from it's default location in my drawing - I also moved a Point Number and Description away from their default locations.

I then rotated the entire drawing about another point. The Bearing remained in the same relative position that I have moved it to. The Bearing was also removed from the database automatically. The Point Number and Description both were reset to the default locations because the point was moved from it's original position. So, just like new points, moved points use the labeling defaults to determine where the text would go on screen. They do not hold the edited position of the text when moved in any way.

I then ran the Re-scale Complete Drawing command and changed the drawing scale a few times - the text size was adjusted but the positions remained where I have moved them to for the Bearing, Point Number and Description.

I am not sure what fixes RWHATMAN was referring to. These issues are on our list to examine.

Cheers,

[rwhatman]

At what point do we ,as users, see the solution this loss of editing that you say has been solved.

I am currently running mscad2005 and it is still an issue in that program?

This is example what I was refering to:

Example: Once lines have been labelled with bearings and distances, these values are often moved to a more suitable location along the desired line. Also, the text value may be edited to change the quadrant of a bearing or perhaps place a space between the quadrant letter and the angular value (ie from N26°26'15"E to S 26°26'15" W).

You can Edit any BEARING or Distance and have it not change.

The answer is simple: Remove it from the database
There is one for Bearing and one Distance

Now it you rotate or rescale a drawing you should want then to change
, but they wont if you remove them from Database.

There is other way to disconnect bearings and distance, but I am not
going to tell you.

This is good example how two people can read the same thing and come up with two different answer.

As I was not sure what your problem was, I said see Help Desk.
I did not think there was a problem.


Remove Bearing From Line Database
Function
Icon: None

Command Name: remove_bearing_from_dbase

Menu: MsPoints | Points Database Utilities

Used in: MSCAD (Basic / Standard / Premium) and inCAD (Standard / Premium)



This will disconnect the bearing from the line. You will be asked which bearing to remove and then the line to remove it from. Any future updates of the line will not affect the bearing.

[artb]

Glen:

If I understand your definition of a point being moved in a rotation or scaling operation becoming a new point thus requiring all aspects of that point to revert to defaults then I disagree with that concept.

If points are rotated to a different azumuth I do not consider any of those points so moved to be new points. I want ALL ASPECTS OF ALL THOSE POINTS to remain relative to all points that are in the rotation routine. This includes the positions of the point no's, the descriptions, the point nodes bearings, distances related to the points. I know that the co-ords of these points change but they are not new points. They should have all the descr. info located at the relative positions of out edits and not at the default positions that new points that we choose to create would.

To revert these items to default positions in these circumstances simply means that any time that we spent making these edits was simply " a waste of time".

We ,as another user mentioned, also try to get our drawing on what will become the final derivation early in the project to avoid the problems that these routines create. It is unfortunate that we have to avoid using what is otherwise a very powerful and useful routine.

Included in these "please do not revert to default states" would be the revised layers that your program allows us to create for point numbers, nodes, descriptions etc. We find it helpuful in large files to create different layers for groups of points, nodes related to those points, descriptions etc so they can be manipulated by manipulating the layers that they are on. You return these points on different layers to your original default layer or the current named layer at the time of the rotation.

If you wish to have a more detailed discussion on these issues I would volunteer some time to discuss them in more detail so that we could both better understand the operation of the routines and/or the desired result of those routines.

[rwhatman]

I use AutoMap to control the layer the Points, Point Numbers, Description and Elevations are on.

They are all on diferrent Layers. If I rotate or rescale none go back to the
Default layer.

You can always send MicroSurvey your ideas and I can tell you
if you bug them enough and enough users need this option
then they will do it.

[Glen Cameron]

Hi Artb - I know exactly what you are referring to and I agree that what you are suggesting would be very beneficial. The idea to maintain the relative edited position of the text after a move or rotate of the job or portion of the job, is on our list for the programmers to dig into. It is not a trivial change and will require a redesign of the database in many ways to be able to maintain and use the relative edited positions.

Cheers,

[rwhatman]

Ok I think I get it now.

Here is a trick I have used.

Save your Drawing to a new Name.

Now delete the MSD file of the new Drawing.

Open New Drawing rotate drawing and save and exist.

Open drawing now with Audit Database and drawing on load.

The Audit Dabase will bring back all points where they are now.
No text will have shifted.

There is many tricks I have used that is not writen down.
If this will help good.
This will be my last tip I write here.

[Glen Cameron]

This can work for those that require this - BUT if you had a Traverse file in the original drawing/database, it would no longer be in the new MSD file that was created via this method. So if you no longer need the Traverse files, then this could work for you. If you need the Traverse files then this probably is not the solution to work for you.

Feel free to continue posting any and all comments/tips/info that you wish. Many customers benefit from the help that knowledgeable users can provide.

Cheers,

[rwhatman]

This can work for those that require this - BUT if you had a Traverse file in the original drawing/database, it would no longer be in the new MSD file that was created via this method. So if you no longer need the Traverse files, then this could work for you. If you need the Traverse files then this probably is not the solution to work for you.

Feel free to continue posting any and all comments/tips/info that you wish. Many customers benefit from the help that knowledgeable users can provide.

Cheers,

After you rotate a drawing the Traverse is no longer important.

If you need it back in the new drawing , just Point Protect points.
Load RAW traverse file in again and there it is.

Most raw traverses are on assumed bearing or between known Points.

If on Assumed bearing just change it.

[artb]

I wanted to add one more scenario where your program alters the location of edits.

I ,like other forum users, use the automap features to establish layers for point numbers and related info. This works fine as long as you don't end up editing any portion of information related to a point.

If we enter the point edit screen and alter anything (descr, coordinate, etc) your program will use the current layer from automap to save the changes. If the point you are editing was created on a different layer it will get changed to the current automap layer and default location set up in that routine thus potentially changing all of the editing which we chose to do.

You can appreciate that for whatever reason we deem it necessary to edit any of this information then basically we don't want your program to alter that editing . We only want it changed when we decide it is necessary to change it. If we need to rotate the entities in a project we want the coordinates to change accordingly. This will alter the coordinates and the azimuth between the entities. Everything else should retain its relativity within the project. Layers, colors, text size etc should not change.

I sincerely hope that your programmers will give serious consideration to honoring all aspects of the edits we choose and you provide us with so that your routines will not alter such edits.

artb