Like all other PowerTools, you start InSync by double-clicking its icon in the PowerTool Menu bar:
The program opens in the main control dialog:
The first task is to choose the objects to be edited by InSync. The possibilities include all objects of any type that exists in the drawing, all the objects that were selected when InSync was started (provided they are all of a common type), and any existing named group of objects. These choices are made on the first InSync screen.
This is the job of the Apply Settings To control grouping. When a group has been successfully chosen, the Edit properties button is enabled. As noted above, it is possible to create the edited group by selecting the objects before launching PGANME. Note that the objects must all be of a single object type: all walls, all floors and so on. You cannot (yet!) mix objects. If the objects do form a group, then the Edit properties button is automatically enabled and the first line of this startup dialog, Selected objects: is enabled and the type of the objects displayed, and this option chosen; if they are not, and warning is issued, and InSync ignores the fact that objects are selected. In general there are few properties common to different object types - the elevation setting is most common exception, and there are a couple of objects types that don't use that, as well.
One of the properties that all objects have is position and orientation - that is, where the objects is on the plan and which way it faces. It is not usual for a user to want several objects located at the same location (in fact, impossible!!), so InSync makes no attempt to do so. While orientation might be desirable, changing that necessitates changing positions as well, and so InSync doesn't work with that property either. Just about all other possible properties are fair game, though.
NOTE: There are a lot of possibilities of objects grouping that are not currently implemented. For example, it would be a great idea to allow for the concept of a room, and split the walls so that the sides facing into the room could be members while other opposite sides are not. That, and like ideas, will most certainly be considered for future addition to PGANME.
The second option, All objects of type:, selects an object type from a drop-down menu which contains all the object types that occur in the drawing. The objects to be manipulated will be all the objects in the drawing of that type - all the doors, all the walls, all the staircases, and so on.
The third option, Named group:, allows the use of an existing named grouping of objects. The attached drop-down menu contains the names of all the groups that have been created up to this point (this list is carried forward as part of a Punch! project file), listed in alphabetical order. There is an add-on checkbox with this selection, Add selected to group, that adds to the chosen group all the objects selected when InSync is invoked, allowing for additional objects to be added to a group. The control will be disabled (grayed out) if any selected object is not a member of the current object type. The additional checkbox labelled Add selected objects to that group, will make the additions to the group permanent.
Any of these three methods yields a group of like-type objects to be manipulated by InSync. When the Edit Properties button is clicked, the object type of the grouping will automatically be assessed and the appropriate edit dialog, as illustrated on the following pages, will be displayed, and they will allow for editing the properties.
The Help button invokes a display of the tool help documentation. The Cancel will cause InSync to exit with no changes done. The Done button also exits from InSync, but all the changes that have been accumulated will be committed (that is, actually performed) at this point.
The Edit Groups button takes you to a second dialog box that is used to delete and make changes to existing groups (the addition of new groups and new members to a group have been covered within the options above). That dialog looks like this:
In the Group section any selected group can be deleted or have their name changed. In the Member section any single object may be deleted from the group. Unfortunately, at this time there is no better way to identify single objects except by their object identifiers, which are simply numbers. Changes made to the groups will be permanent even if the Cancel button is used at the main menu level.
InSync and the contents of this help file are
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