Nil Pen Patterns Change Color

Issue

Objects with a Nil Pen Pattern change color when they are copied from their source layer and pasted onto a new layer that has a Layer Color Attribute assigned. This did not occur in PowerCADD v6.

Affects

PowerCADD 7 all versions

Description

The Pen Pattern and Pen Color of objects with a Nil (No) Pen Pattern are changed when pasted onto a new Layer with a Layer Color Attribute assigned. This has the net affect of making it appear as if the Nil Pen Pattern object is now assigned a color. In fact it appears the Pen Pattern attribute is being overwritten when the object is pasted onto the New Layer with a Layer Color Attribute assigned.

To See the Condition

In PowerCADD v6, do this:

1. Create a New Untitled document
2. Layer 1: no layer attributes assigned
3. Layer 2: assign red as the Layer Color attribute
4. Draw a Circle on Layer 1 and assign it a Pen Pattern = Nil and a solid fill color of your choosing
5. Copy or Cut the object drawn in step four onto Layer 2
6. Note the Pen Pattern is still Nil. That is , it did not change
7. This is correct behavior

In PowerCADD v7, do this:

1. Create a New Untitled document
2. Layer 1: no layer attributes assigned
3. Layer 2: assign red as the Layer Color attribute
4. Draw a Circle on Layer 1 and assign it a Pen Pattern = Nil and solid fill color of your choosing
5. Copy or Cut the object drawn in step four onto Layer 2
6. Note the Pen Pattern is still no longer Nil. That is , the object now has a pen color and pen pattern assigned
7. This is incorrect behavior

The issue can be a subtle but important one with some smart object tools such as the WildTOOLs door and window tools which give you the option to use white filled objects (with Nil Pen Patterns) to mask out other objects such as wall lines.

The bottom line is the object Pen Pattern Attribute is being modified and thereby adopting the color assigned to the destination layer.

Work Arounds

Unfortunately, there isn't an elegant work around other than resetting the pen pattern of the copied/pasted objects back to Nil. That work around clearly has a problem in that if the object being moved between layers is composed of groups, every object in the group would then have a Nil pen pattern which is clearly not the desired intent. Bottom line at this stage is to be careful.

The issue has been reported to Engineered Software for action.

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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