Drawing Preview when Editing Groups

Feature Overview

An application level preference to enable/disable seeing a preview of the drawing when in Edit Groups mode (Edit menu -> Edit Groups).

Feature Description:

Currently when editing a group, all other drawing data is hidden and only the group is displayed. However, when editing groups, it's often important to see other drawing data for reference. The preview, if enabled, could be a reduced opacity version (i.e. dimmed) of the layers that were visible when the Edit Groups command was chosen from the Edit menu.

Example: If the user needs to rotate one element in a group relative to some other general drawing reference point, it's important to see that contextual data from the main drawing.

Current model requires users to either:

1. Guess where the other drawing data is when editing the group. This can result in having to edit the group multiple times to get things right
or
2. Copy data from the general drawing, then choose Edit Menu > Edit Groups, then Paste the general drawing data for reference. After completing the Edit Group operation the pasted reference objects need to be deleted

The problems are fairly apparent with both models. Option (1) in particular may get even more cumbersome if Edit All Layers is OFF and the object needing to be copied is on a different layer, or if the object needing to be copied is part of different group or symbol.

The ability to enable/disable preview when editing groups would speed up the drawing editing / production cycle. An application level preference seems reasonable since it's presumed most users would want this feature 'on or off' ( much like Hide Reshape Fills is a logical Preference choice for general application behavior across all drawings).

We think the new feature in PowerCADD 7, which displays static text Editing Group in the Layers Window during an Edit Group operation is a significant first step and we think being able to choose to see (or not see) a drawing preview that is faded (reduced opacity) would be a welcome feature and logical next step.

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Poll Choices are:

• Very Important Feature: you think the feature is a big deal and has a big impact to your workflow
• Important Feature: not critical to your workflow but something you'd find useful or would explore more deeply if it was there
• Not an Important Feature: this feature wouldn't impact your workflow at all and you're not interested or don't see value in exploring it

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