What features would you like to see added to a future version of DataCAD?
#72958 by joshhuggins
Fri Dec 22, 2017 6:23 pm
I went thru my past wish lists & weeded out some of the fluff and brought the better ones (imho) over here as a bump for v20. It was pretty impressive to see how many wishes had been fulfilled since around v.12! Big thanks Dave & crew for adding so many of our ideas into our favorite software :!:

Wishes That Came True in v19 - Thanks for these and many others!
:idea: Move or Copy with Drag, that when we are prompted to click the point to drag from, that there was a By Center option in the menu that would pick the center of the selected entities like the S3 At Center in the clipboard select menu.

:idea: I have been digging the drag and drop feature a lot and I just tried dragging and dropping a DLF layer file thinking it might trigger the Import Layer feature but alas it was a no-go. Could this be added?

:idea: Would really like an Add option in the Import menu so we can import layers as new layers instead of only being able to Replace or Merge with the existing active layer.

:idea: Would it be possible for Datacad to release the audit file after a repair is done running on a file? We get a file in use warning and have to close the drawing in order to open audit file and then reopen the drawing to compare things.

:idea: If it's not to hard to do, would it be possible to get the Message Bar to accept Ctrl+Enter as Enter also when it is displaying a text entry prompt? I have become so used to using Ctrl+Enter to close the MText dialogs (and other dialogs) I am now constantly hitting Ctrl+Enter to try to close the Message bars text entries also.

:idea: Could we get a Absolute Zero button in the Print\Quick Layout Datacad menu please?





:idea: Top Wish List Item: Scale File Expansion - Nuf said :wink: :idea:
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Misc. Past Wishes

:idea: Would love stamps that could be inserted into symbols, so when viewing the symbols from the drawing they would show the name of the symbols w/ corresponding path options like the existing File Name stamps have.
(Edit) This would be nice for Xrefs also! Maybe a toggle in the Attribute dialog to be self aware?

:idea: What if smart arrows could have a head and tail? The Arrow menu & Arrow properties dialog could have Head Style and Tail Style buttons/drop downs to set each.
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:idea: If you open a symbol from a drawing that it could use the current drawings printer settings vs. it always resetting to no printer setup. The
Code: Select all[Printer]
Settings Auto Load=
doesn't quite fit the bill for this.

:idea: If we could store light sources inside symbols. Having them be maybe a small piece of geometry or maybe just a point that would have light data stored in it's database/file. Each light point, hmm I like that name, could have the shader setting info stored in it. And maybe allow saving the shader settings to ini files so we can save light sources info to file to easily load them into these light points.

:idea: Tile-able SBF textures, with a scale adjustments like the materials have.

:idea: The ability to Change, More, Hatch, (all settings from Hatch Type Menu). This way we can apply hatch type settings independent of the hatch menu which forces you to set the correct hatch settings for each different hatch "type".

:idea: Multiple color translation files that we would be able to load at the import and export dialogs. Right now it's pretty straight forward to create/adjust the default.tbl using the DWG TrueView to view a clients ctb file and then adjust the translation table, the clincher is having to swap out the single tbl file each time, and keeping them stashed away in different folders. The swapping out of the default.tbl in the file system is a little much for some users. Maybe adding a path option \support files\Translation Tables?

Color Mapper
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Color Translation Export
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Color Translation Import
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:idea: I think I have a possible answer to a somewhat big wish we've had of being able to fill multiple attributes by filling out a single visible attribute in the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog. Right now when we set an attribute to Locked, it is hidden from the users view when using the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog and only reads information from the Value field, EVEN if you have the attribute set to use the Database linkage. If it could be tweaked so if Locked, & Database linkage is set to Field Filled By Lookup, that it would still hide the field in the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog, but display the data in the symbol according to the lookup. Seems like this should be an easy solution, I hope it is. Thanks!

:idea: When you make a selection using Fence in the Move or Copy commands (and other commands?) if when your Max Lines limit is passed it could show the boundary of the fence vs. the square extents box. It would help see the actual boundaries of the objects being selected better and help in locating things when not moving by specific points.

:idea: If we could set a different linetype and spacing for door swing arcs for both 2D & Smart Doors so we could have solid doors and then dashed swings.

:idea: A lil bumpin for an oldie wish of expandable toolbars.
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:idea: Another toolbar option that would help speed things up is if they showed all of their contents instead of the slow scrolling arrow that we have now when the toolbar drop down hits the vertical limits of the screen.
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:idea: When in the middle of adding entities to a clipboard set, that if we need to use Identify, it would not forget the previously selected entities when we right click out of Identify back to the Add To Set menu.

:idea: Ability to turn covers on or off for polylines via area. I know we can use the Polyline Edit menu to toggle covers on and off, but to be able to just do an area of a bunch of polylines and set all of their covers to on or off. There is no real way to view if the covers are on or off in Datacad, so having go back and forth between Datacad and a viewer check which ones you have covered can be tedious.

:idea: Export a drawing to DWG, in the export dialog if there was a check box that if a layer that contains a image file is exported, that the image file is copied to export location.

:idea: Linetype menus had implied match for things like Change, Linetype, (Implied Match) or Change, Spacing, Mask, Linetype, (Implied Match).

:idea: Ability to undo a GTV deletion.

:idea: Copy, Rect. / Circ. Array had a "Previous" option that would use the last used settings and number values.

:idea: This could just be added to the now existing Search and Replace tool. We have Datacad drawings spanning 20+ years. Back when linetypes were dependent on the dcadwin.lin file we would run into issues where linetypes would show up wrong because the difference in the dcadwin.lin files over time. Our fav was a grass linetype that showed up randomly as a clay tile. Now since v.11 we have had the great ability to create our own custom linetypes and escaped the hindrances of the dcadwin.lin file. Which has been really great, but one thing that is not really great is updating all of our old files with the new desired linetypes & spacings. So my wish would be that there could be a translation file like our DXF/DWG import where we could set peramiters and have it convert all of the drawings data. I know that currently we can simply use the change tool with mask, but with the v.12 Search and Replace tool now in the works I think having a way to save these mask settings and be albe to recall/reuse them easily and to preform multiple replacements at once would be very handy. The more smart entities, symbols with attributes we get the more important I can see it will be to be able to keep things upto date with changing standards, codes and just drawing practices in general. It "seems" the technology is pretty much in place and now expanding the UI a bit and allowing saved settings would be the next step I think. But I'm just a knuckle head wishing out loud again.
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:idea: If we could pick more than one Linetype in the mask tool like we can with the Entities & Colors. We don't use Weights here but maybe that should have multiple options for users who do use it?

:idea: A match option in the Change, Dims menus.

:idea: The new By Center option in the 3D Rotate options.
Neil Blanchard wrote:Would that be the center of all three dimensions, or just ortho to the screen?
Since we can only rotate by one axis at a time probably would be best to only use the currently selected axis I would think unless others can think of a better reason to use all of them. If the By Center button is sticky for all three axis, then it's one click to use it on all three axis as the different axis are selected from the menu. Just seems more straight forward to me. I think that's why we can only rotate one axis at a time, to help keep track of how things are being rotated, which my simple little mind appreciates. :wink:

:idea: In the Object Snap menu that F6 was a three way toggle. Off, Quadrant, & Octant. I often need snapping on curves at 45* for "stuff". No. Of Points Does not work for circles and I would prefer to keep No points set to 4 for things like lines, but for circles and curves at 8.

:idea: When using single line text with Center, Right, Middle or Top alignments that the text would type out (display) correctly when typing it, rather than when the text string is complete. Makes trying to type within limits and other alignments very hard.

:idea: Could we could import a layer set and be able to add a prefix or suffix to the layer names. This could save a lot of time creating custom layer groups which are based on a standard groups of layers.

:idea: When we go to edit a clipcube, if it's currently using a polyline clipcube, that it would already have F0 Polyline selected when entering the edit menu.

:idea: Be able to move an xclip independently of it's xref. Say you've preformed a complicated clip on an xref and the data being xref has been relocated in the original file, you have to recreate that complicated clip again now. If there was a way in the edit menu to move the clip and have it update the clips x/y/z point data by the selected amount would be great. Often being able to use a previous move distance would be ideal. Maybe it should be done in the regular Move menu as a toggle-able option, and in the mask menus?

:idea: If the Mask tool had a spacing option, maybe under Linetypes? I need to change a bunch of lines types drawn with an incorrect 3/32" spacing and would like to change only them to 6" spacing. They are on a bunch of different layers, linetypes etc, so selecting by spacing seems to be the way to go for this as far as I can tell.

:idea: I am really digging on the Pak-N-Go feature. It makes sending a file(s) off nice and quick, but I think it could use a few little tweaks.

- If the "pak" was in a more accessible format like .zip It would be nice to just be able to extract files using standard means without having to launch Datacad or even having it installed.
- A Pak-N-Go export to DWG option so we can quickly send outsiders files and take advantage of the nice file structuring and other Pak-N-Go features.

:idea: Wish M/PText had individual margins for Top, Bottom, Left & Right

:idea: What if the dynamic Shift/Ctrl flip/flops that we have when inserting symbols worked while doing a Move/Copy, Drag?

:idea: How about a find box / drop down for the PText and MText dialogs with a next/previous button? The drop down part would enable recalling the last say 10 searches.

:idea: An extended character codes to turn Fixed Reference Point off

:idea: I don't know if this would be possible, but it would be nice if the Status Area drop downs would jump when a letter is pressed. Say I drop down the linetype drop down, and I am at Circles, if the drop down is "dropped" and I hit G on the keyboard, it would jump to the first linetype that starts with a G, which is my case would be Grass. Like the font dialogs in most apps, Datacad included.

:idea: Make the Object Snap None option also turn off the More Option snaps (Fast Symbol, Fast 3D, Quick and SelSet). This might make the most sense since they are also snapping options, and when setting your snapping via a macro now this is used to clear the current settings.

:idea: Arrow and Dot options in the Non-Linear dimensions. Also the filled option in Angular is kind of cool. Seems arrows in general need to be the same through out all the dimension types if possible.

:idea: Database selection dialog box for symbol attributes showed both CSV and TXT files default. Having to switch to TXT every time is time consuming. I'm so lazy. :twisted:

:idea: When changing a dimension Scale Type to Arch or Inch/Frac. in the Dimension Properties dialog, that it would read the current setting for the Stacked Fractions from the drawing and use that setting instead of defaulting to off. Or an ini setting to set the default.

:idea: Longer names for symbol fields, currently limited to 14 characters.

:idea: Could we get an ini option so when inserting a symbol using Symbols Scale that the line factor option would disappear, and would be set based on the plot scale in the same manner as the XYZ enlargement values relative to the symbols original 1:1 size? We want to make sure that everything, including the line spacing gets scaled accordingly to the plot scale when using Symbol Scale. I couldn't think of a case where I would want to use symbol scale and have a different line factor than what would match the enlargement off the top of my head, but if someone can think of a reason, then maybe the ini option could not make the Line Factor disappear, but set the line factor to the corresponding factor each time the plot scale is changed, and then at insert the user could overwrite if needed.

:idea:
Mark Bell wrote:A small wishlist - when using dimensions/change text position allow the option to see the text rather than just the bounding box/outline as it will allow better placement of text/dims on the sheet in tight areas.

:idea: How about adding to the mask tools, an option to pick a specific symbol? Move, Mask, Entity, Symbol, Specific

:idea: If we could resize mutlitple MText all to the same point. Say Text, MText, Resize, Point, (pick a point), and then select via EGAFM to pick.
Image
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(I cleaned the schedule vertically before the screen shot to avoid confusion)

:idea:
Dave wrote:Smart Free Trim (or Smart Trim)
With a Smart free trim you could assume everything is selected.
Select Smart Free Trim
Select entities to trim

The only option required would be Layer Search
So just start free trim and then start selecting. I think this even make more sense to me.

:idea: Adding a Field Viewer to the Symbol Browser so when you hover your mouse over the symbol the field values display in the viewer.
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:idea: Could we get Symbol Attributes to allow a space as the last character without it getting chopped off? Helps when you need to add a character to help keep things centered using Fit and Aligned alignments for text.

:idea: In the Rotate menu could we get an option for 'By Insert Point' to rotate symbols by their insertion point.

:idea: So you know how we can open the properties and set the Enlargement factor for symbols and xrefs? Could we get a way in the Enlargement menu to directly set this enlargement value so we can apply a value to multiple entities (that support it) at once or sequentially via EGAFM? Maybe a single button that changes the way the F1-F4 Enlargement buttons work, direct factor vs. multiplying factor?

:idea: Could the Color Palette dialog have quick keys so when F1-S5 are typed it selects the corresponding color from the first 15 like the menu color selector does?

:idea: Could coincident entity detection be added to Tangents line selection? I had a symbol that had a line in it that i wanted to match the angle of so I traced a line over the line in the symbol so I could pick it for Tangents but it would only pick the symbol and never the line. I even tried moving the symbol to the back but that didn't work either. Had to move the line off the symbol then pick it.

Coincident entity detection would also be nice for Move, Drag as I couldn't pick the line to move it off either as it keep picking the symbol.

Or maybe symbols need to be reworked a bit for coincident entity detection? Either way, thanks!

:idea: Roger R wished
You can import the layer as new when using the File/Import and select the layers.
The only issue currently is you can import layers with the same name, maybe Dave can start adding a number when a layer name is duplicate
Layer
Layer01
Layer02???

:idea: Would it be possible to have the Batch Plot dialog show what pen table is currently set? Or better yet have it be a drop down list where we could change the pen table to be used?

:idea: Could Ctrl+Right Clicking on entities gain the ultra handy coincident selection function?

:idea: Could TTF's have their outlines highlighted also when they are selected? Right now only the fill changes to grey and if you are zoomed out a bit you can't tell if the TTF's get selected, at least with a few of the fonts we are using.

:idea: You know how when you are using the Layer Manager and you try to erase all of the current ON layers including the active layer, Datacad erases all of the layers except the active layer? Could it be made so that in these types of cases that Datacad would just turn on the first layer in the drawing and set that layer to active and then execute the erase command on the desired layers?

:idea: Could the Printer Settings Dialog 'Paper Orientation at Device' get a 4 way option instead of just 2? I constantly have to rotate all of my PDF output from my PDF print driver either 90° or 180°. I've tried adjusting things on the driver side but can't get it any setting to output to match the screen orientation.
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:idea: artmanvt2000 wishes
Have and option to add text under the dimension line. We often add text under the dimension line to indicate clear, minimum or R.O. requirements. It would be nice if this could be associated to the dimension.

:idea: Could Pen Table locations be remembered per drawing? We have our standard office pen tables which we sync between the stations [PATH] location for Pen Tables, but we often create unique Pen Tables for job specific needs and save the custom pen table to the job folder on our server so we don't end up with hundreds of one time use pen tables in our standard Pen Table folder. Then when we return to another project Datacad looks at the job folder where the last pen table was saved and can't find our standard pen table so it creates the default dcadwin.dpf in that previous job's folder. If drawings could remember where they last loaded the pen table from would be a big help. It would also help when someone else gets into the job that needs to use the custom pen table to be able have it be loaded instead of defaulting to the dcadwin.dpf file when their Datacad station is looking at the location set in their [PATH] value and can't find the custom pen table there.

I know this is kind of a wish for a core change, but maybe if in Version=3.00 of the Pen Tables that gets that 256 pen overhaul Mark Bell and I have been wishing for, maybe this could be implemented then.

EDIT: Add color palettes to this also :)

:idea: If we open a folder using the Recent Folders option in the Symbol Browser, can that folder be moved to the top of the Recent Folders list?

:idea: Could we get an ini option to suppress the warning when we open a drawing created by a newer version pretty please? :mrgreen:

:idea: Would be nice if we could edit P/MText in-place so we could see what our text is doing while we edit it relative to the drawing entities.

:idea: Could the OK, Cancel, Spell Check buttons be slid over to the left a tad to give us a bit more grip space for resizing the MText/PText Dialogs?

:idea: Could the Last Paper Size= & Last Check Printer Paper Size= recall the paper sizes by the papers sizes name vs. the paper's position in the list? The paper size lists size/postions can be like a moving target sometimes with driver/windows updates but the paper names usually stay the same. Would save us a lot of time in updating our Saved Printer Settings over and over. Most of my staff here has given up on using them because they set the wrong paper sizes after updates add something to the list.

:idea: Would still be nice if Change, Text, Contents worked on Symbols with Attributes. I know a lot of us have added the 170 function number workaround, but would still be nice to not have to invoke the shortcut for each symbol you want to edit.
#72959 by jimgoodman
Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:48 am
joshhuggins wrote:Color Mapper
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Color Translation Export
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Color Translation Import
Image


The color mapper especially would be very helpful in our work with consultants and collaborators who are stuck in the AutoCAD world.
#72961 by joshhuggins
Sat Dec 23, 2017 12:54 pm
jimgoodman wrote:The color mapper especially would be very helpful in our work with consultants and collaborators who are stuck in the AutoCAD world.
Yeah. Back when I was doing a ton of this I was constantly having to remember to manually rename and replace the default.tbl file before importing/exporting with different ones I had saved for each clients color translation settings.
#73140 by joshhuggins
Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:00 pm
I am really trying to take advantage of using Symbol Fields these days. Came up with a few wishes. :D

:idea: Support for longer field names.

:idea: Allow for reordering of the field positions

:idea: Would it be possible to add a BOOLEAN type and get support for it in the Form processor to output True/False and/or Yes/No

:idea: One thing that would save me a TON of time is if we could create sets of fields and save them to a file, maybe call them Field Sets. Then when creating new symbols we could load the appropriate field set into the Field Editor without having to recreate every field everytime.

:idea: Would like to be able to set the default fields created for new symbols, could be set by picking a default Field Set?
#73142 by jimgoodman
Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:56 am
joshhuggins wrote:I am really trying to take advantage of using Symbol Fields these days. Came up with a few wishes. :D

:idea: Support for longer field names.

:idea: Allow for reordering of the field positions

:idea: Would it be possible to add a BOOLEAN type and get support for it in the Form processor to output True/False and/or Yes/No

:idea: One thing that would save me a TON of time is if we could create sets of fields and save them to a file, maybe call them Field Sets. Then when creating new symbols we could load the appropriate field set into the Field Editor without having to recreate every field everytime.

:idea: Would like to be able to set the default fields created for new symbols, could be set by picking a default Field Set?


Yes Please....
#73256 by joshhuggins
Wed Feb 14, 2018 1:43 pm
:?: Any chance of filled polylines supporting knockouts?
#73283 by dhs
Tue Feb 20, 2018 7:40 am
What if smart arrows could have a head and tail? The Arrow menu & Arrow properties dialog could have Head Style and Tail Style buttons/drop downs to set each.


Hi Josh,

I have a macro currently nearing completion that has double headed arrow functionality (albiet, not particularly smart). Don't know if it might be useful to extract the arrow functionality into a stand-alone macro, but would be interested to hear if you thought that it might be useful as a macro (at least until Mark & Dave grant your wish) ?
If you care to have a look at it you can download the macro from the following location: [url]http:www.dhsoftware.com.au/downloads/beta/NoNameInstall.exe[/url].

The arrow functionality is only a very small part of this macro. Select S3 from the main menu to get to the arrows. The idea to provide double headed arrows in the macro came from this forum (can't remember exactly, but I think somebody shared a technique of using dimension lines to create double headed arrows, or perhaps it was a previous iteration of your wish).
#73288 by joshhuggins
Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:37 pm
dhs wrote:
What if smart arrows could have a head and tail? The Arrow menu & Arrow properties dialog could have Head Style and Tail Style buttons/drop downs to set each.


Hi Josh,

I have a macro currently nearing completion that has double headed arrow functionality (albiet, not particularly smart). Don't know if it might be useful to extract the arrow functionality into a stand-alone macro, but would be interested to hear if you thought that it might be useful as a macro (at least until Mark & Dave grant your wish) ?
If you care to have a look at it you can download the macro from the following location: [url]http:www.dhsoftware.com.au/downloads/beta/NoNameInstall.exe[/url].

The arrow functionality is only a very small part of this macro. Select S3 from the main menu to get to the arrows. The idea to provide double headed arrows in the macro came from this forum (can't remember exactly, but I think somebody shared a technique of using dimension lines to create double headed arrows, or perhaps it was a previous iteration of your wish).


The functionality of the head and tail of the macro is great. The end game for me would be to have the functionality as part of the standard smart arrows as I feel it's a core entity type. I have gotten pretty good at just double arrowing (drawing one arrow over another) and think I would miss the "smarts" of the heads auto adjusting it's orientation when stretching.

If we still didn't have double headed arrows in Datacad and if the smarts of the smart arrows could be duplicated and then it would be very useful to me. But I would hate to say "go for it" to try to get that function of auto orientation only to have Datacad LLC finally come out as it seems like it would be one of the simpler things to add into the main arrows, so I am hesitant to say do it. Either way I think it's great as is for a stop gap as is if the Blocker menus were removed and just cleaned up a bit to be just for the double arrows functions. As for a name Double Arrows works for me :D Thanks for your work on this and the other Datacad adventures you've taken on!
#73289 by dhs
Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:18 pm
and think I would miss the "smarts" of the heads auto adjusting it's orientation when stretching.

Smarts could be definitely be added, but smarts in any macro will only work when the macro is invoked (i.e. you would need to invoke the macro for it to automatically fix heads on arrows that had been stretched etc). I only wrote the functionality because DCAL does not provide a menu routine directly to the Arrow menu, but will possibly add the smarts as well as the ability to auto-fillet the leader lines (I think auto-fillet arrow leaders was also part of my old dhText macro, and a few users commented on how much they liked the curved leaders at that time ... auto fillets could also be repaired by smart functionality, but I think it would be beyond me to repair jagged joints between curved polyline segments that had been entered using the tangent or arc functionality in the polyline menu).
Like you, I expect that double headed arrows should not be too difficult to implement in the main program, so I'm not going to rush out an do this, but the smarts and fillets might be an interesting challenge for a rainy weekend!
#73358 by joshhuggins
Mon Mar 05, 2018 6:54 pm
Would it be possible to get 'Arc Length' added as an input option for 2Pt arc so after we pick the Center and Start points, we could hit the Arc Length button so we could input an arc length and Datacad would draw the arc that length vs the angle method we have now?
#73379 by joshhuggins
Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:31 pm
And look now it has the drop down and buttons to save symbol field sets! :mrgreen:
Attachments
Save Symbols Dialog.png
Save Symbols Dialog.png (28.45 KiB) Viewed 24682 times
#73487 by joshhuggins
Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:15 pm
Would it be possible to add EGAFM selection to Move & Copy's In front/Behind menus since they reference a single entity to move relative to?
#73503 by melina
Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:21 am
joshhuggins wrote:I am really trying to take advantage of using Symbol Fields these days. Came up with a few wishes. :D

:idea: Support for longer field names.

:idea: Allow for reordering of the field positions

:idea: Would it be possible to add a BOOLEAN type and get support for it in the Form processor to output True/False and/or Yes/No

:idea: One thing that would save me a TON of time is if we could create sets of fields and save them to a file, maybe call them Field Sets. Then when creating new symbols we could load the appropriate field set into the Field Editor without having to recreate every field everytime.

:idea: Would like to be able to set the default fields created for new symbols, could be set by picking a default Field Set?


Yup. And add a way to mass change fields in or out of Datacad. Spreadsheet/text file format maybe. This might have to be a macro, rather than a function and maybe not even doable. Just thinking about having to change that cost field every year...one at a time...shudder...
#73573 by joshhuggins
Fri Mar 30, 2018 12:47 pm
Could we get a check box for the DCADWIN.INI file line "Process XREFs= " added to the Program Prefs DXF/DXG Tab, Default Import Settings section?

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