Changing View and Geometry Properties

A new option has been added to the context-sensitive right-mouse-button popup menus in Annotation 2001, in conjunction with the preselection functionality. Depending on the select focus, you can access a "properties" option that allows you to change the parameters of either a preselected geometry element or a preselected view.

You can modify the following:

• View Properties
• Geometry Properties

Exercise:

• Modifying View and Geometry Properties

Modifying View Properties

To modify the parameters of a view using preselection, first set the select focus to View, and then click the view in the viewport to highlight it. From the context sensitive menu, select the option View Properties.... This opens a box that displays the type of the view selected and in which the following parameters are displayed and can be modified:

• view scale
• view name
• rotation angle

For example:

Two other buttons are available:

• Measure can be used to measure distances within the view. Note that measurements are absolute on the view; that is, they are not affected by view scaling.
• Info displays detailed information about the view. This comes by way of the familiar View Contents table, but also with an output box containing further view properties. For example, the view that is the subject of the table shown above would offer the following information:

  View Properties:
  View Type: "RIGHT_SIDE"
  View Name: "right1"
  View Scale: 2.0
  View Angle: 0.0
  

Modifying Geometry Properties

To modify quickly a geometry element - view geometry or manually added geometry - set the select focus (if necessary) to All or Geometry and click the geometry element in the viewport. Then select the option Geometry Properties... from the context sensitive menu. This opens a box that displays the type of geometry selected and in which the following settings are displayed and can be modified:

• color
• line type
• line size
• pen size

For example:

You can also "grab" the properties of other geometry in the viewport and apply them to the selected element. Alternatively, you can apply the default geometry settings to the selection.

Two other buttons are available:

• Length... can be used to measure lengths on the selected geometry.
• Geo... displays geometric properties in an output box. For example, the line that is the subject of the table shown above would offer the following information:

  Geometric Properties:
  Type: "Calculated Line"
  Vertex 1: -165.86816453567201,73.201215736522997
  Vertex 2: -158.69423372270299,73.201215736522997
  

Exercise: Modifying View and Geometry Properties

In this exercise, you will freely practise changing the properties of views and geometry elements.

Load the drawing TUT90-AM-refline-ex.mi from the Parts directory, and change the properties of the views and geometry as described above.

Note that the preselection focus is displayed and can be changed at the bottom of the interface. For example, on Windows systems: