Group Dynamics
I've recently upgraded to BricsCAD 10 and I'm very excited by the direction you're taking a program. I also view this as an opportunity to further differentiate the program from AutoCAD and make some real improvements. That being said, one command that has always bothered me is the group command. In my opinion, the command is next to useless in both BricsCAD and AutoCAD. Having been a long-time user of AutoCAD LT, I got used to the ability to very quickly group and ungroup entities. This is also similar to other graphics programs such as Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. The first time I tried full AutoCAD I was horrified at the way the group command worked. The way we use group (and I believe the way most people use it) is to simply temporarily glue objects together and then be able to break apart. I have no interest in naming them, preserving them, saving them or doing anything else with them. I have always been disappointed that this particular command in BricsCAD is a holdover from the AutoCAD. I believe there's a better way and here's what I would propose:
I suppose there are people that actually do name their groups so therefore I would propose two methods of grouping which could be adjusted within the settings dialog box. In the settings there would be an entry "groups" or "group command". After this there would be a pull down with two options. The first option would be "quick group" which would operate exactly as AutoCAD LT does. You simply have the ability to click a button choose the entities and they are glued together instantly. You click a button and select the group they are ungrouped (this could also be added to the right-click menu). The second option would be called "named groups" and would function exactly as the command functions at this time (assuming those who use this command find it satisfactory). Since switching to BricsCAD I virtually have abandoned the group command. Every time I try to use it I get very frustrated and close it out. I have tried tracking down lisp routines which replicate the grouping similar to AutoCAD LT, however, I have not had great success at finding lisps work exactly the way the command should. Please consider this as a possible feature to be added in a future release. As always, thanks for listening.
Comments
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quick group + named group would be nice indeed
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I've got a bunch of lisps I put together as a "front end" to group.
ga adds entities to an existing group (or creates a new one)
gs subtracts something from an existing group
gx "explodes" a chosen group
that's all, no names, or anything
It works in Autocad R14, tommorrow I'll try it in Bcad v10
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How is your German?
http://ww3.cad.de/foren/ubb/Forum145/HTML/000019.shtml#000017
Gruppen.zip contains:
MG.LSP (Make Group):
"MG" -> (Make Group)
"ADDG" -> (Add Group-elements)
"DELG" -> (Delete Group-elements)
"XG" -> (eXplode Group)
"XGA" -> (eXplode Group All)
"TPS" -> (Toggle PickStyle)0 -
Roy, I will look into these lisps. But I think this demonstrates my point. Something this basic should be built into the program.
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Groups are a big issue for me, too. I never knew LT had better group-editing tools than full AC. If I had known, I probably would have bought LT instead. I don't use groups at all in Bricscad or full AC, but in Sketchup and Vectorworks I arrange nearly everything into groups, usually leaving them there permanently. In both those programs, a group appears to be a single object, just like a Block, but you can enter a group to edit its contents by double-clicking on it, and exit the group just by clicking outside it.
I tried mg.lsp in v9.2.15.US. Vielen danke, Roy. MG and TPS worked for me, but the others didn't. XG just goes into the built-in Group command. ADDG gives me a call stack error when I select a group, and a Keine Gruppe gewählt message if I select anything else.0 -
I must apologise: I should have mentioned that I hadn't really tested MG.LSP.
If you change MG.LSP according to the list below all functions should work (tested on 10.1.7 trial).
There is however no highlighting so when working with an existing group you yourself must remember the elements that are already in the group.line 91 should be:
(command "_.-group" "_un-group" ELEM)
line 118 should be:
(command "_.-group" "_un-group" ELEM)
line 223 should be:
(command "_.-group" "_remove" (car GNAME) SGET "")
Comment out (which means: put ; at the beginning) the following 9 lines:
(These lines contain "(command "_.select" ...", "(setq MRKSET ..." or "(MARK-UNMARK ...")
154, 155, 156,
172,
209, 210, 211,
218,
232.0 -
That's great! Now everything works. And it's nice having some prompts in another language. I'm going to edit the prompts in all my other lisps to add some more linguistic variety.
Only one slight problem still: if I use DELG with a group pre-selected, everything gets deleted from it (but the group apparently remains, in some sense, because XGA says it explodes a group). I'll just have to remember not to do that.
Thanks again, Roy. Terrific customer support.
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