The objects in the Punch! plans have plan colors determined by which plan they reside on. While the color used by a plan can be changed, that affects all the objects on that plan. PlansPlus now may change the the color and other attributes of objects specifically. The list of object features that can be edited within PlansPlus include:
This picture depicts a plan of a pair of walls, a window and a ceiling fan; the ceiling fan, being an electrical object, has the standard electrical plan's color. On the right is the same plan in PlansPlus, with the horizontal wall changed in color and fill, the fan changed in color, and the callout turned off for the window. The dimensions lines on the vertical wall have been moved outwards by 10" each.
Object color - An object's color on the plan can be changed. It is done by right-clicking on an object in PlansPlus and clicking on the Add special color... menu item. A color choice box will appear to facilitate the color choice, and the operation will end with the new color in place.
The default floor color for an object can be restored by choosing the Remove special color menu item. Note that the checkmark on the Add special color... menu item indicates that a special color is in effect for this object; it will be cleared by this operation.
Multiply chosen objects may have their color changed in a single operation. The Color dialog will outline the color in current use by only one of the selected items, and the checkmark will reflect the state of that one object.
Object fill - Walls are normally solid color on the plan, and closed items like floors, floor cutouts, fill areas and property lines are empty (that is, filled with transparency). This can now be changed on an object-by-object basis. Right-click on the targeted object in PlansPlus and select Add special fill.... A popup will display the supported fill options; choose one, and the object will be filled with that pattern. Fillable objects include:
Fills can sometimes cause problems. Objects are drawn essentially in the order they were originally drawn on the plan, which means that objects which were drawn early, regardless of their relative elevations, can be overdrawn by later objects. This situation is made moot by the fact that most wide objects are filled with transparency, allowing earlier objects to show through. However, if a floor is filled with a pattern, it is no longer transparent and will block out anything drawn earlier in its same place.
Walls are a special case. In Punch! a wall objects is actually a wallset, a set of joined walls. This can make it awkward when only a few walls in a set need coloration or fill, particularly when they are members of the exterior wall set (see The Ten Commandments of Walls). Therefore, there is a special command to use when the only a segment of a wall is to be colored or filled: use Add color/fill to walls..., which only colors or fills the selected wall segments, rather than the entire wallset as Add Color/Fill to objects... does.
Like color, the fill can be reset back to Punch! defaults using the Remove special fill menu choice. Also, multiply chosen objects may have their fill changed in a single operation. The checkmark, at the beginning, will reflect the state of only one of the selected objects.
Object callouts - Many objects in Punch! include sizing information on the plan. This "wordiness" can get in the way of clarity, especially when the objects in question are already existing and are on the drawing to add context for the changes. The dimensions and other descriptions can be eliminated from the plan on an object basis by right-clicking on the object and choosing Callouts. Note that it is already checked by default, indicating that this object's callouts (if any) are turned on. Selecting the Callouts option alternately switches it on and off. Note that walls, doors and windows also have an equivalent switch capability in Punch! itself; if either the Punch! callout is off or the PlansPlus callout option is off, the callouts will not be seen.
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In this sample, note that the dimensions near the cursor and those measuring the length of the Lav have been moved outward. The old walls have been filled with crosshatch and colored gray, leaving the remodeling changes highlighted. The center door's callout has been suppressed. |
Several objects may be selected at once for setting the callout. The checkmark will reflect the state of one of those objects selected. When the menu is closed, it will, of course, reflect them all.
Wall Dimension Offset - The distance from the wall that the autodimension is drawn can be adjusted using this option. There is always one dimension (as long as the autodimension feature in Punch! is selected), and a second dimensions is added when there are openings on the wall. The default distance is 10" (of scaled distance) for the first line and 20" for the second. This can be changed on a per-wall basis using this option. It is generally recommended the the two dimensions be displayed together, the second 10" further out than the first. Setting the option, as usual, requires right-clicking on the wall and selecting the Dimension offset... item. A popup will accept the two distances. A button on the popup allows the distances to be reset back to the default.
Multiple walls may be selected for changing the dimension offsets at once. The values displayed in the dialog when it comes up will be those of just one of the selected objects.
A Punch! wallset has a single wall thickness, shared among all members of the wallset. One example of this is the exterior wallset, which has to be a single wallset in order to use a whole series of Punch! features (see The Ten Commandments of Walls for details). However, if the exterior wallset includes walls of different thicknesses, then Punch! cannot handle that without painful workarounds. PlansPlus bridges the gap with the ability to set individual walls in a wallset thicker than the rest; in fact, to set them all individually, if that is required.
The Wall Thickness... menu choice allows for the currently selected wall to have an individual thickness set. A small dialog is displayed showing the current setting, and it may be changed. That setting will, of course, only affect the plan display within PlansPlus, and will not appear in Punch! (as all these settings likewise do).
[Note: the following is a feature that awaits the Punch! AS4000 documentation release, as it depends on an AS4000 feature. For now, it is grayed out.]
Name the object - this option allows the user to give an object a name or change the name currently in use. The name is used in various places to identify the object; see, for example, this page. It can be any string the user wants, as long as the user wants it to be, though conciseness is always a good idea. The check mark on this item means that a name is currently assigned, and using the option will allow the existing name to be edited. One and only one object may be selected for name change at a time. While it is possible for more than one object have the same name, it is not advisable.
The grayed out option Set edge length... is used exclusively with the Dimensions in Detail MicroTool.
The default font setting for all text objects is set in Options->Text Font.... Once a text object is defined, the default no longer controls the font used by the object; changing the default does not affect already set text. The PlansPlus option Options->Set All Text Font... does that; that is, it changes the font for every text object existing on the plan. If this option is picked, the following dialog is displayed:
Instead of setting all the font sizes to a single value, a proportional value can be entered in the Proportional Text Sizing control. It is defaulted to 100, which means no change in size; 200 would double the text size. The possible range of values is 10-300. All the rest of the text values are set when the Select User Text Font and Settings button is pressed; the standard text selection box is displayed with all the options for setting the font, weight and attributes. The text size selection on this dialog will be ignored, using instead the proportional setting.
Note that text settings are saved with the .pro file on an individual text basis, so each text message can be edited separately. The Set All Text Font... changes all text files to be uniform. The PowerTool interface does not allow the PowerTool to change the default text, and therefore newly added text will revert to the default. Setting the default has to be done separately by the user. Also, beware (as it says in the dialog) that the font for controlling dimensions and callout text is not controlled with these options; instead, use Edit->Dimension Properties...->Fonts.
There are a group of settings in the Set All Wall Options which give the user control on a global level to wall options that are normally only expressed in object properties. The three options that can be set are autodimensions to center or surface, object level autodimension on or off, and callouts on or off. When PlansPlus is loaded it canvasses all the walls in the design and determines their state, and displays the checkmarks in the menu appropriately. For example, if all the walls have autodimensioning set to center (the Punch! default), the "center" checkmark is turned on. If they are all found to be set to surface, then that option is checked. If some are one and some the other, then both options are checked. In either case, clicking on one of the options will set them all to that value, and the appropriate checkmarks will be displayed.
Note that there are now three levels of control on wall autodimensions and callouts. There is a Punch! top-level control (Options->Automatic Dimensioning and Options->Window/Door Callouts which can turn all autodimensioning and callouts on or off, then there are the individual properties at the object level, displayed in the Properties dialogs/menus, which control a single wall. Finally, PlansPlus has added a third control for turning off all callouts (meaning both callouts and autodimensioning, as well as all other verbage on the plans for an object), also at the object level. If any of these is turned off, then the feature is not displayed. The Set All Wall Options mentioned in the previous paragraph controls the second, Punch! object level switches as a group. At some later date, as experience indicates, the PlansPlus and Punch! object level options may be merged.
There is a menu pick (Options->Reset special features) to allow all the custom colors, fills, callout and dimension offset settings (but not the name) to be reset back to default values.
Object features are remembered in the the .pro file, so they persist from session to session, until they are purposely turned off.
PlansPlus and the contents of this help file are
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