Topic Title

Hello:

At the DBUG meeting the other night, Evan showed us lot of the things that you can do to adjust/tweak/fine tune/obsess about in the DataCAD 11 interface. One of the lesser known things that is possible to do, is to widen the pulldown areas of the Status Panel (which is the area the has all the hot buttons for the LM, Linetype Menu, etc., and shows the active layer name, the active color, active GTV, etc.). For example, here's the way I have the Status Panel set up here at home on my single 1280x1024 LCD monitor:


click on image to see a larger version

How does this work, you may ask? Just add a line like this to the [Status Area] section of your DCADWin.INI file:

[StatusArea]
DropDownWidth=xx

...where xx is the number of additional pixels to add to each pulldown. In the case I'm showing, the number is 91, and for a typical side menu location, I have found that 25 or 27 works well.

Just a simple tweak-suggestion;

If your tired (or your eyes get tired) of staring at a dead-black backround, shift the background to a very dark blue like that of old while-lin-on-blue prints. It seems easiet on the yes, and give the interface-plane some definition, rather than staring into the Abyss.

Hello Ted:

...but I'm using a white background...

I do not have a StatusArea in my DCADWIN.INI file, even though the status toolbar is active. Would love to be able to see all of layer names. Any ideals. Thanks

Just add the [StatusArea] paragraph. I added mine right after [MenuBtn], here's mine:

(...Stuff Above)

[MenuBtn]
BTN_SPACING=2
POINT_SIZE=10
FONTNAME=Arial
STYLE=BOLD
ShortLabels=0
Classic=FALSE

[StatusArea]
DropDownWidth=48
MaxColors=15
MaxLineTypes=15
MaxLayers=15
MaxScales=15
MaxGotoViews=15

[DrawingArea]
FONTNAME=Courier New
POINT_SIZE=10
STYLE=

(More stuff below...)

HTH

That did the trick, thanks. John