Topic: Calling for user command input

[ronjonp]

Thank you for the response Cuddles - though, I'm rather puzzled by this statement:

I have discussed the benefits of using Auto-lisp functions with them, such as your layer director, among others, to automate drawing processes and increase productivity. I have provided these functions to them but I see they're rarely used.

...
...
..., as I can't immediately think of a method which would be less intrusive than the method used by my Layer Director.

Lee

X2

[Cuddles]

Hello Lee,

You are correct. Some colleagues are intentionally disabling the layer director, whilst others use fine but for only a few layers (3-4 at most).
One of the reasons for a different approach is because of the following:

1: Due to the number of layers used in my office (office standard layers), many of the layers generally need to be drawn with the same or similar commands i.e line, pline, xline, arc and so forth. So for example, if the "line" command is picked by the user, within your layer director, only the first layer that requires a line command to execute will be created. So therefore, other layers down the "tree" which require the line command to be invoked and created, will essentially never be created because of the way in which the layer director reads the layers entered by the user.

2: From point 1, Below is a snippet of what the layers would look like in the layer director (there are some 20 odd standard layers used in my office):

Code: [Select]

("[PX]LINE" "TCL00 bold" 4 "Continuous" 60 1 )
("[PX]LINE,LINE"         "TCL01 thick" 6 "Continuous" 20 1 )
("LINE" "TCL02 thin" 4 "Continuous" 9 1 )
("[P]LINE" "TCL03 centre" 4 "Centre" 9 1 )
("[DM]TEXT,TEXT"         "TCL06 text" 7 "Continuous" 20 1 )
("DIMLINEAR"         "TCL07 dim"         8 "Continuous" 20 1 )
Looking at line 3, this line will never be invoked because the layer director picks the 2nd line first, and invokes this. Same for "Pline" in lines 1 and 2.
Therefore, to draw on layer TCL02 thin, I would have to enter this myself into the autoCAD layer tree and then draw on that layer. Hence the layer director is limited when a lot of layers are used which require the same command to implement.

For objects such as text and dimensions, which for me are all on there respective layers (dims on dim layer, text on text layer), the layer director is perfect for this. It's just for multiple layers requiring the same command where the issue lies.

The idea of using a toolbar with layer buttons is to be able to select the layer to draw on, a single click, and you are then prompted to pick the command in which to draw on that layer i.e line, pline etc... Once the drawing is done and the drawing command is exited, the programme will then restore back to the previous layer (same as the layer director). This gives the user a little more flexibility to choose the layer upon which to draw.

I have attached a PDF of the layers used by my office. Please feel free to experiment yourself and see if you have the same result.

I do apologise for being nit-picky and no disrespect to you, but I hope all this makes sense.

Cuddles.