Simulate Thin Lines :: PowerCADD

Question

My coworker doesn't like the Simulate Thin Lines feature and I do. Is there any way to have my Simulate Thin Lines setting override someone else's when I open their drawing?

Requirements:

PowerCADD v6 or PowerCADD v7
PowerCADD v7 and Mac OS^? 10.4.4 recommended

Background

The short answer to the question is No. The same answer would also apply to any setting that is part of Drawing Setup and here's why.

With the introduction of PowerCADD 6, Engineered Software introduced the Simulate Thin Lines feature to take advantage of how Quartz graphics in Mac OS X can render objects to screen. That feature is still there in PowerCADD 7 (for specifics about this feature review your PowerCADD user manual).

It's important to remember Preferences and Drawing Setup settings are fundamentally different in where they are stored and how they affect a drawing. Understanding the fundamental differences between the two tells us why the simple No answer to the question is what it is:

Preferences:

Settings assigned in PowerCADD menu > Preferences... are saved at the application level and are stored locally with a specific Mac OS X user ID on your computer (User/Library/Preferences/PowerCADD/PowerCADD 7 Defaults). Those settings are applied to every drawing opened under that Mac OS X user ID.

Drawing Setup:

Settings assigned in Layout menu > Drawing Setup... are saved at the drawing file level. These values are retained when the file is opened by anyone else, on any computer or under any Mac OS X user ID.

What To Do

In this particular set of circumstances, the Simulate Thin Lines option is a Drawing Setup setting in both PowerCADD 6 and PowerCADD 7. As such, there is no way to automatically replace your Simulate Thin Lines setting with someone else's.

For example: If you coworker opens a drawing and changes Layout menu > Drawing Setup > Show tab > Simulate Thin Lines to Off and Saves the drawing. Then the next time you open that same drawing, the settings are remembered. You will physically have to turn Simulate Thin Lines back On again if that's how you like to work.

The only work around we can offer is chatting amongst yourselves, and agreeing on a standard. Hopefully understanding why the situation is the way it is will be of some help. Aside from using Applescript and GUI^? scripting tools to automate the process (which we don't think is practical), unless Engineered Software physically moves the Simulate Thin Lines settings from Drawing Setup to Preferences there's no way to automatically change that settings once a drawing is saved.

Hint: There have been some big improvements with respect to the saving of Window positions being OS X user ID smart in PowerCADD 7 that are worth exploring in the manual.

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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