How to make BricsCAD work the way you work ($60)
Customizing BricsCAD is the only tutorial reference for users wanting to change the way BricsCAD looks and works. It teaches you how change the user interface and make new menus, hatch patterns, write LISP code, and much more. This ebooks is available for separate editions for BricsCAD V8 through V20, and so the content listed below varies, depending on the version of BricsCAD.
All chapters contain tutorials for learning how to accomplish the customizations. They include instructions specific to Linux, Windows 7-10, and Mac OS X where necessary. Topics in this book:
Changing the User Interface
- Adjusting BricsCAD’s Settings
- Customizing the BricsCAD Environment
- Adapting the User Interface (new chapter)
- Tips for BricsCAD Users
Customizing the User Interface
- Introduction to the Customize Dialog Box
- Customizing the Menus
- Customizing Toolbars and Button Icons
- Writing Macros and Diesel Code
- Adapting Mouse, Double-click, & Tablet Buttons
- Creating Keystroke Shortcuts, Aliases, and Shell Commands
- Modifying Ribbon Tabs and Panels
- Customizing the Quad Cursor and Workspaces
- Customizing Rollover Properties
- Designing Tool Palettes
Customizing BricsCAD Drawings
- Designing Simple and Complex Linetypes
- Patterning Hatches
- Decoding Shapes and Fonts
Programming BricsCAD
- Writing Scripts
- Coding Field Text
- Programming with LISP
- Designing Dialog Boxes with DCL
- Dabbling in VBA
The book features dozens of tips, chapter summaries, key terms, useful abbreviations, and the names of new commands. Illustrations are in full color, and features new to each release are highlighted. The PDF file is formatted for printing on standard 8.5x11 paper, with margins designed for three-hole punching and binding.
- US$60.00
- 546 full-color pages
- 10-18MB PDF format; suitable for printing on standard 8.5"x11" paper
- Free subscription to the weekly upFront.eZine e-newsletter
- Shipped to you by email within 24 hours
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Table of Contents: Customizing BricsCAD
Important note: The content of each edition varies depending on the features in the release
Part I — Customizing the Environment and the User Interface
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Many Ways to Customizing, Which Customization?, Versions of BricsCAD, 58 Tips for BricsCAD Users, For Further Reference, Tutorial Books, BricsCAD API References, DWG, DXF, and DWF References,
Chapter 2: Adjusting BricsCAD’s Settings
Touring the Settings Dialog Box, Settings Dialog Box: Toolbar, Categorized/Alphabetic Sorting, Export Settings, Drawing/Dimensions/Program Options, Finding Variables, Accessing and Changing Values, Variables Specific to Windows, Changing Variables at the Command Prompt
Chapter 3: Customizing the BricsCAD Environment
Starting BricsCAD, Command Line Options, Command Line Switches, b Switch - Script Files, l Switch - No Logo, ld Switch - Application Loading, s Switch - Support Paths, p Switch - User Profiles, pl Switch - Batch Plots, t Switch - Template Files, Regserver and Unregserver Switches, Settings at the Command Line, Changing the Colors of the User Interface, Background Color, Changing the Cursor’s Color and Size, Display Settings, UI Parameters Controlled by The OS, Snap Marker Options, Hyperlink Cursor Options, Dynamic Dimension Options, Support File Paths, Files Settings, Files Section, Projects Section, Printer Support Section, Templates Section, Tool Palettes Section, Dictionaries Section, Log Files Section, File Dialogs Section, Reusing User Preferences, Launching the User Profile Manager, Using the Profile Manager
Chapter 4: Adapting the User Interface
Customizing Drawing Tabs, Related system variables, Customizing the Look From Control, LookFrom Command, related System Variables, Customizing the Command Bar, Benefits of Multiple Monitors, related System Variables, Customizing the Ribbon, Related System Variables
Chapter 5: Introduction to the Customize Dialog Box
Touring the Customize Dialog Box , About Main and Partial Customization, Menu Bar, ABOUT Cui Files, CUI Customization Files, Search Field, Tabs, Shortcut Menus, Apply and OK Buttons, The Nuclear Option, Using Partial Menus to Customize BricsCAD Correctly, Setting Up a New Partial Menu, Sharing Customizations, Removing Partial CUI Files
Chapter 6: Customizing the Menus
Quick Summary of Menu Parameters, Modifying the Menu Bar, Understanding Menu Title Conventions, Keyboard Shortcut - &, Dialog Box - ..., Menu Titles, Editing Macros, Cancel - ^c, Transparent - ', Internationalize - _, Enter - ;, Pause - \, Editing the Help String, Adding Menu Items, Deleting Menu Items, Adding New Tools, Context Menus, Sharing Menus, Importing AutoCAD Menus
Chapter 7: Customizing Toolbars and Button Icons
Quick Summary of Toolbar Parameters, Customizing the Look of Toolbars, Rearranging Toolbars, Dragging and Moving Toolbars, Turning Toolbars On and Off, Making New Toolbars, and Modifying Them, Creating New Toolbars, Alternative Method, Adding Controls, Flyouts, and Separators, About Controls (Droplists), Adding Controls (Droplists) to Toolbars, Customizing Controls (Droplists), About Flyouts, Adding Flyouts to Toolbars, About Separators, Adding Separators to Toolbars, Removing Buttons, Renaming and Deleting Toolbars, Removing Buttons and Toolbars, Renaming Toolbars and Buttons, Customizing Buttons, Modifying Button Parameters, Editing the Title Name and the Help String, Changing the Command Macro, Replacing Button Images
Chapter 8: Writing Macros and Diesel Code
Quick Summary of Metacharacters in Macros, Quick Summary of Diesel Functions, Simple Macros, Transparent Commands in Macros, Dashed Commands, Options & User Input, Options, Pausing for User Input, Combining Options and Pauses, Other Control Keys, Menu-Specific Metacharacters, Diesel Coding, About Diesel, How to Toggle Check marks, Toggling Grayouts, Reporting Values of System Variables , Applying Variables Everywhere, How to Add Units, How to Solve Check Marks that Conflict with Icons, How to Deal with Two Sysvars, Reporting Through Diesel, Formatting Units, Formatting Diesel Output, Formatting Numbers, Fix, Index, Nth, Rtos, Formatting Angles, Formatting Text, Upper, StrnLen, Variables in Diesel, Complete Catalog of Diesel Functions, Math Functions, Logic Functions, Conversion Function, String Functions, System Functions, Diesel Programming Tips, Debugging Diesel, ModeMacro: Displaying Text on the Status Bar
Chapter 9: Adapting Mouse, Double-click, & Tablet Buttons
Quick Summary of Default Buttons, About Mice and Their Buttons, About the Pick Button, About the Middle Button, About the Right Button, Other Input Devices, Digitizing Tablets, 3D Mice, Touch Screens, Touch Pads, Defining Actions for Mouse Buttons, Button Assignment Tutorial, Assigning Shortcut Menus to Buttons, Writing Macros for Buttons, Defining Actions for Tablet Buttons
Chapter 10: Creating Keystroke Shortcuts, Aliases, and Shell Commands
Quick Summary of Shortcut Keystrokes, Defining Shortcut Keys, Editing & Deleting Keyboard Shortcuts, Assigning Multiple Commands, Command Aliases, BricsCAD Aliases: Sorted by Alias Name, BricsCAD Aliases: Sorted by Command Name, Creating New Aliases, Editing & Deleting Aliases, Rules for Writing Aliases, Hand Coding Aliases, Shell Commands, Editing Shell Commands
Chapter 11: Modifying Ribbon Tabs and Panels
Ribbon Commands and System Variables, Customizing Ribbons, Tutorial: Ribbon Configuration Through Workspaces, Tutorial: Making New Tabs, Customizing Ribbon Panels, Creating a new Panel, Catalog of Panel Elements, Append Ribbon Panel / Insert Ribbon Panel, Delete, Add Launcher, Append Row / Insert Ribbon Row / Insert Row Panel, Append Break / Insert Ribbon Break / Append Separator, Append Split Button, Append Toggle Button
Chapter 12: Customizing the Quad Cursor and Workspaces
Quick Summary of Quad Cursor Settings, About The Quad Cursor, Customizing the Quad Cursor, Customization Through the Quad Tab, Customizing Workspaces, Switching Workspaces, Not Customizing Quad Cursors for Workspaces, Workspace Customization Elements, Properties Pane, Named Workspace Properties, Named Menu Properties, Named Toolbar and Ribbon, Properties, Workspace Palettes Properties, Palette Toggles
Chapter 13: Designing Tool Palettes
Navigating Tools Palettes, Quick Summary of View Options, Icon Customization, Palette Customization, Customizing Tools, Customizing Tools Properties, Adding Programs and Macros to Tools, Organizing Tools , Importing Tool Palettes from AutoCAD
Part II — Customizing BricsCAD Drawings
Chapter 14: Designing Simple and Complex Linetypes
Quick Summary of Linetype Definitions, About Simple and Complex Linetypes, Commands Affecting Linetypes, Loading Linetypes, Scaling Linetypes, System Variables Affecting Linetypes, The Special Case of Paper Space, The Special Case of Polylines, Customizing Linetypes, At the Command Prompt, Testing the New Linetype, Creating Linetypes with Text Editors, Linetype Format (.lin), Line 1: Header, Line 2: Data, Complex (2D) Linetypes, Embedding Text in Linetypes, Text, Text Style, Text Scale, Text Rotation, Absolute, X and Y Offset
Chapter 15: Patterning Hatches
Quick Summary of Pattern Definitions, Where Do Hatch Patterns Come From?, How Hatch Patterns Work, System Variables that Control Hatches, Creating Custom Hatch Patterns, -Hatch Command, Hatch Command, Understanding the .pat Format, Comment and Header Lines, Comment, Start of Definition, Pattern Name, Description, The Hatch Data, Angle, xOrigin and yOrigin, xOffset and yOffset, Dash1,..., Adding Samples to the Hatch Palette, Tips on Creating Pattern Codes
Part III — Programming BricsCAD
Chapter 16: Writing Scripts
What are Scripts?, Drawbacks to Scripts, Strictly Command-Line Oriented, Recording with RecScript, Writing Scripts by Hand, Script Commands and Modifiers, Script, RScript, Resume, Delay, Special Characters, Enter - (space), Comment - ;, Transparent - ', Pause - Backspace, Stop - esc
Chapter 17: Decoding Shapes and Fonts
Quick Summary of Shape Definitions, Fonts, Complex Linetypes, and Shapes, SHX Fonts, About Fonts in BricsCAD, Using SHX in Complex Linetypes, SHX in Shapes, SHX in GD&T, Shape Compatibility with AutoCAD, About Shape Files, The Shape File Format, Header Fields, Definition Start, shapeNumber, totalBytes, shapeName, Definition Lines, bytes, Vector Codes, Hexadecimal Conversion, Instruction Codes, End of Shape - 0/000, Draw Mode - 1/001, 2/002: Move Mode -, Reduced Scale - 3/003, Enlarged Scale - 4/004, Save (Push) - 5/005, Recall (Pop) - 6/006, Subshape - 7/007, X,y Distance - 8/008, X,y Distances - 9/009, Octant Arc - 10/00A, Fractional Arc - 11/ 00B, Bulge Arc - 12/00C, Polyarc - 13/00D, Flag Vertical Text Flag - 14/00E
Chapter 18: Coding Field Text
Placing Field Text, Field Command, Fields in MText, Fields in Attributes, Changing Field Text, Double-clicking Fields in MText, Editing Fields in Attribute Definitions, Controlling the Way Fields Update, UpdateField Command, FieldEval Command, FieldDisplay Command, Another Field Text Example, Compatibility with AutoCAD Field Codes, Updating the Field Text, Understanding Field Codes, Complete Field Code Reference, Groups, Metawords, Formatting, Complete Format Code Reference, %tcn — Text Case, %lun — Linear Units, %dsn — Decimal Separator, %aun — Angular Units, %lwn — Line Weight units, %qfn — scale Factor, %ctn — ConverT, %ptn — PointTs (xyz coordinates), %.n — decimal places, %prn — display PRecision, %fnn — File Names, %byn — BYtes (file size), href - Hyperlinks, Date & Time Format Codes, Quick Summary of Field Date and Time Codes, Objects and Property Names, Objects, Arcs, Attribute Definition, Associative Dimensions, Blocks and External References, Circles, Ellipses, Hatches, Leaders, Lines, Mtext, OLE (object linking and embedding) objects, Polylines , Polygon Meshes, Polyface Meshes, Raster Images, Regions, Rays and Xlines, Shapes, Single-line Text, Splines, Tables, Tolerances, Viewports, 3D Faces, 3D Polylines, 3D Solids, Sheet Sets
Chapter 19: Programming with LISP
The History of LISP in BricsCAD, Compatibility between LISP and AutoLISP, Additional LISP Functions, Different LISP Functions, Missing AutoLISP Functions, The LISP Programming Language, Simple LISP: Adding Two Numbers, LISP in Commands, Remembering the Result: setq, LISP Function Overview, Math Functions, Geometric Functions, Distance Between Two Points, The Angle from 0 Degrees, The Intersection of Two Lines, Entity Snaps, Conditional Functions, Other Conditionals, String and Conversion Functions, Joining Strings of Text, Converting Between Text and Numbers, Other Conversion Functions, External Command Functions, Command Function Limitation, Accessing System Variables, GetXXX Functions, Selection Set Functions, Entity Manipulation Functions, Advanced LISP Functions, Writing a Simple LISP Program, Why Write a Program?, The Id Command, The Plan of Attack, Obtaining the Coordinates, Placing the Text, Putting It Together, Adding to the Simple LISP Program, Conquering Feature Bloat, Wishlist Item #1: Naming the Program, Defining the Function - defun, Naming the Function - C:, Local and Global Variables - /, Wishlist Item #2: Saving the Program, Wishlist Item #3: Automatically Loading the Program, Wishlist #4: Using Car and Cdr, Saving Data to Files, The Three Steps, Step 1: Open the File, Step 2: Write Data to the File, Step 3: Close the File, Putting It Together, Wishlist #5: Layers, Wishlist #6: Text Style, Tips in Using LISP, Tip #1. Use an ASCII Text Editor., Tip #2: Loading LSP Code into BricsCAD, Tip #3: Toggling System Variables, Tip #4: Be Neat and Tidy., Tip #5: UPPER vs. lowercase, Tip # 6: Quotation Marks as Quotation Marks, Tip #7: Tabs and Quotation Marks
Chapter 20: Designing Dialog Boxes with DCL
A Quick History of DCL, What Dialog Boxes Are Made Of, How DCL Operates, Your First DCL File, DCL Programming Structure, Start Dialog Box Definition, Quick Summary of DCL Metacharacters, Dialog Box Title, OK Button, The Default Tile, Testing DCL Code, LISP Code to Load and Run Dialog Boxes, Displaying Data from System Variables, Adding the Complimentary LISP Code, Clustering Text, Supplying the Variable Text, Leaving Room for Variable Text, Fixing the Button Width, Centering the Button, Testing the Dialog Box, Defining the Command, Examples of DCL Tiles, Buttons, Making Buttons Work, Check Boxes, Radio Buttons, Clusters, Columns and Rows, Boxed Row, Boxed Row with Label, Special Tiles for Radio Buttons, Debugging DCL, Dcl_Settings, DCL Error Messages, Semantic error(s) is DCL file, Dialog has neither an OK nor a CANCEL button, Error in dialog file "filename.dcl", line n, Dialog too large to fit on screen, Additional Resources
Chapter 21: Dabbling in VBA
Quick Summary of VBA Program Components, Quick Summary of VBA Commands in BricsCAD, Introduction to VBA, Accessing VBA Programs, Embedded or External, Sending Commands, Writing and Running VBA Routines, Displaying Messages, Constructing Dialog Boxes, BricsCAD V15 Automation Object Model, Object-Oriented Programming, Common Object Model, Object Browser, Line Entity, Properties, Methods, Events, Dialog Box with Code, Designing the Dialog Box, Adding the Code, Clicking Cancel, LastInput.Dvb, Quick Summary of VBA String Manipulation, Quick Summary of VBA Data Type Return Values, Quick Summary of VBA Data Types, Quick Summary of VBA Predefined Constants, Conversion Routines, PointToString Conversion Function, Private Function PointToString(vIn As Variant) As String, Dim sPt As String: sPt = vbNullString, Dim iPrecision As Integer, iPrecision = ThisDrawing.GetVariable("LUPREC"), If VarType(vIn) > vbArray Then, sPt = StringFromValueFixedDecimal(vIn(0), iPrecision) & ", ", sPt = sPt & StringFromValueFixedDecimal(vIn(1), iPrecision) & ", ", sPt = sPt & StringFromValueFixedDecimal(vIn(2), iPrecision), End If, PointToString = sPt, End Function, StringToPoint Conversion Function, Dim sCoords() As String: sCoords = Strings.Split(sIn, ","), If UBound(sCoords) = 0 Then, tmpPt(0) = Val(sCoords(0)), Loading and Running LastInput.Dvb, Quick Summary of VBA Variable Declarations, Quick Summary of VBA Shortcut References
Part IV — Appendices
Appendix A:Command Summary
Appendix B: Concise Summary of System Variables & Settings
Appendix C: Concise DCL Reference
Quick Reference of DCL Tiles, Quick Reference of DCL Attributes, Quick Reference of LISP Functions for Dialog Boxes, Quick Reference of Dialog Boxes Displayed by LISP Functions, Summary of Tile Reference, Exiting Dialog Boxes, Multiple Radio Buttons, Multiple_Select, Errtile, Value and Mnemonic , LISP Functions for Dialog Boxes, Dialog Boxes Displayed by LISP Functions, Alert, Help), Acad_HelpDlg, AcadColorDlg, Acad_TrueColorDlg, InitDia
Appendix D: Concise LISP Reference
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