With the ability to display high precision lengths for objects such as walls, the natural question is, how can these lengths to appropriately set? Before Dimensions in Detail allowed for adjusting a wall length within itself, the adjustment had to be done "in the blind" in Punch! itself, where the accuracy of the result could not be monitored, of course. The positioning of a wall's endpoints determines the length of the wall, and the accuracy of locating these points to good to 6+ decimal places, which is far higher than any available CRT display can show placement (though perhaps not higher than that of a high dot density printer). So how can a wall be accurately sized? First let's discuss how Punch! does it.
There are two methods available in Punch! to set any edge length, and a third method for walls only. The first and most obvious is to use the mouse to drag one of the end points into the necessary position. While obvious, this method is the least desirable for accurate placement. At the highest magnification of the plan the nominal pixel density is 6 pixels per scaled inch on the plan, so the best accuracy attainable with the mouse (assuming the snap grid is off) is 1/6th inch (4.233... mm). The mouse is thus insufficient for accurate setting at accuracies of 1/8" or 4 mm or better.
The second method of placement is called the nudge, and is done using the arrow keys rather than the mouse. Each time an arrow key is stroked, the point moves one snap grid size in the indicated direction. All the selected points in one or more objects may all be moved at the same time, thus adding great flexibility to this method. The size of the movement is determined by the settings of the snap grid, and is not influenced by the pixel density of the display. The snap grid can be set to any value in inches or meters expressible by up to five consecutive digits. This means that setting the snap grid to 1/32" (.03125") is possible, and that nudge counts at that accuracy are exactly performed. A setting of 66-5/32" can be done by setting the wall length to 66" using the mouse and the snap grid set to 1" snaps, and then resetting the snap grid to .03125" and moving one end 5 nudges outward. In metric, setting the snap grid to 1 mm will allow for nudges that are accurate to 1 millionth of an inch per nudge, or .00000254 cm.
[In version 10 that situation has worsened. A bug in the GUI no longer allows a grid length of less than 3/8", meaning that a nudge of less than that is impossible to do. After acknowledging the bug Punch! then changed the lower limit in Version 10.5 for nudges to 1/16", and furthermore, all grid lengths are now rounded the the closest 1/16th inch/ .1mm (or whatever larger fractional setting is current in Punch!'s Options->Units of Measurement...), making, for example, 1/5" or 1/10" impossible to nudge to. Presumably, this is not thought by Punch! to any longer be a bug, but rather how they expect the software to be used.]
The third method, exclusive to walls, is to make use of the custom wall length tools for drawing a wall, rather than the normal wall tools. These tools, denoted with the added octothorpe (for low-brows, a tic-tac-toe sign: "#") in their icons, will request the exact wall length from the user after the wall is drawn; the end point of the wall will be extended or retracted to the exact indicated length. This is usable, of course, only when drawing a single wall. The snap grid is ignored in the setting of the end point when it is entered with these tools.
With this background, TKE has implemented a method for setting the length of an edge of an object based on the third method described above. It is reached using the object context menu that is part of PlansPlus. The last entry in the context menu, Set edge length..., is grayed out unless Dimensions in Detail is loaded with PlansPlus. If it is, and if the currently selected object is a single edge of an eligible object, the option will be available. Selecting it will cause the Edge Length Change dialog to appear. (Eligible objects are stairs, railings, floors, property lines, paths, edgings, fences, fills, shapes, berms, cutouts, freehand roof panels, switch connectors, sprinklers, excavations, walls and decks. Note that while this option will handle curved edges, the measurement is not made along the curve but is made in a straight line from handle to handle).
The dialog displays a depiction of the chosen object, with added arrow heads to indicate which end is leading (front) and which end is trailing (back). There is an entry box for typing in the Desired measurement and a pair of buttons to select which end of the object's edge will take up the slack of the length change. Finally there are the usual OK and Cancel buttons.
The operation is intuitive: type in a new length for the edge, select which end will move, and click OK. After the length change is entered, the depiction will change to show the relative change to the edge: the amount added or subtracted from the edge will be drawn in red. When the OK button is clicked, the change will be executed in PlansPlus and will be exported to Punch! when PlansPlus exits, and the change will appear there, in the master copy of the plan.
The entry space for the length will show inches (with five decimal places to the right of the decimal) if the current system of units is english, and millimeters with no decimal places to the right if it is metric. Obviously, the five decimal places is overkill. The reason why so many are shown is because of the use of binary fractions in english units. A value in 32nd's of an inch requires five decimal places to display without rounding; for example, 1/32" in decimal is .03125", so to allow for correct setting to 32nds of an inch, five decimal places.
The legend below the entry field shows the options for entering a value into the field. For metric, enter millimeters. For english, there are several options. The specification shows [ft' ]inch[.xx][-n/d]. The square brackets denote optional parts of an english specification, and therefore the only necessary part is the number of inches. The option in front of the inches is a number of feet followed by a single quote character (which must be there). If it is included, then the feet and inches are added together to get the length. Either one of the following options has be used, or neither; using both is an error. The first implies using a decimal point and a decimal fraction to create finer than inch precision. The other option allows for fractions of an inch to be used. In the fraction case, the dash has to be used, as does the slash. The denominator d of the fraction may not be zero; using zero will result in undefined results. Spaces are allowed in the full specification only between the foot marker (') and the inches number. In the picture of the dialog above, a correct english specification has been entered, including feet, inches and a fraction.
Dimensions in Detail and the contents of this help file are
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