A new SuperLiner Tool

A new Tool Type

A completely new tool type, a parallel pattern creator draws unlimited amount of parallel entities with just one single stroke.

By Architect M.A. Risto Mäkelä,

Berlin, Germany

The CAD world lives parallel

Most plans drawn in CAD contain a great number of parallel lines and other line-shaped entities, as polylines, traces, elongated hatches or solid fillings and so on. Actually there are relatively seldom other kinds of entities than parallel lines and their perpendiculars defining the principal graphical contents of a plan.

We can't get rid of it

We are creating these parallel groups and bunches over and over again, with great effort, because they must lie accurately related to each other, and, also very important, they must all carry properties determined by the planning intelligence and its framing standards. These relations are the very content of a plan, any plan. Around the world, every moment, people are somewhere defining and documenting into CAD files these important relations between parallel lines, creating millions of parallel lines over and over again.

Anything can be copied, but...

With CAD, delightfully, once drawn can infinitely be copied and thus a lot of time saved, because the relations between copied entities as well as their properties are copied along. In most cases groups of geometrical objects are copied because their internal relations and properties are suitable for the next task, only the geometry of the entities has to be adjusted, mostly only in one direction and most often even the rotation has to be adjusted. This editing after copying however is a setback that consumes much of the time originally saved by the copy method.

Another setback is in our minds. Mostly we don't think wide enough by selecting the objects to copy and not wise enough by selecting the base and target of the copy operation. Because we are focused to one step at a time.

Outlining an inline multiliner tool

Thinking of this labor, the need of a tool to overcome it becomes obvious. A tool to accelerate this most common task in all CAD works, drawing groups of parallel linear entities with predefined internal distances, and with predefined all entity properties. In order to really serve its purpose, the tool must be able to repeat the internal geometry and properties of arbitrarily selected entities, and at the same time keep the external geometry of the new group under control of the planning hand.

In other words you want to pick any amount of parallel entities and use this entire selection as a pen. It is much alike the manner a painter does as he dips one edge of his wide brush into one color can and the other edge into another. Only this tool brush may carry an unlimited amount of properties dipped from an unlimited amount of cans. And it keeps the result apart from each other at the same time as the distances between each of the resulting trails makes up the most important information contained in the resulting set of objects.

Roots

Once the idea becomes clear, you start wondering, why is this not made long ago? I don't think there is a one answer to that. As a matter of fact, there has been tools accomplishing tasks very close to this idea. But they were created to be part of an application for certain specific tasks, and did not cover any general need. As example be mentioned a feature in the Ketiv wall routines for architects (R14) where you could draw and record lines of a wall by picking a similar existing wall as template.

And on the other hand, there is the Autocad Multiline entity that unfortunately goes one step in this direction and takes two steps backwards. With Autocad Multiline command you can draw several parallel lines with one stroke. But Multiline has not become very popular because of its many restrictions to its choice of properties and the need of specific commands to edit it, which is a very nasty overhead and setback.

The tool is there

The described tool exists already. Its main feature is to repeatedly create groups with similar internal geometry and properties as something that already at least once exists in one of the currently open drawings. You select the template by a selection line that you pull cross over the wished source objects. A perpendicular to the selected objects at the crossing point of this selection line acts like a section cutter.

It records the entities and the distances between the entities. This "comb" then serves as a multiline pen and clones the intersected entities to the drawn length. All simultaneously drawn entities however still remain single, as if they were drawn separately. There will be created no special objects whatsoever, and everything can be edited and forwarded in a completely normal way. You only have drawn numerous normal entities simultaneously.

The author of this tool, Architect M.A. Risto Mäkelä at Cadapter Software in Berlin, Germany, tells of its birth. "I also started with a wall cloner that lets you pick a template wall and then draw a similar one where desired. And thinking more of it, I found out that the idea is not bad at all and as a matter of fact implies further ideas of other similar tools for a vast amount of other common tasks. Besides of that, for such tools you are all the time finding more and more use as you work with it. So I decided to develop a universal cloning tool instead of just a wall cloner. Of course, cloning walls with it still is a piece of cake".

How does it work?

The cloning tool itself is completely insensible to whether those lines belong to a wall in a floor plan or a section, elevation, electrical floor plan or circuit plan or whatever. And it is insensible to the dimensions and amount of these objects to clone. It also is almost insensible to the selected entity types. It just records the selection and you may start drawing.

Example: make a section

So, instead of picking just a wall you can pull the selection line across the entire floor plan and thus create a "very wide wall type" containing all exterior and interior walls and the rooms there between altogether. This combined "linetype" contains all - really all - vertical lines that you need for a cross-section through the building all along that selection line.

And they are not just analyzed and created similarly – they are really cloned in the real sense of the word, with a special programming trick. Everything is exactly identical with the selected source.

Less drafting

You draw with one single stroke a vertical piece of this line , there are all the walls. Then you add the horizontal lines, possibly cloned from another section by making a similar catch through it but vertically this time.

After editing the intersections with an X, L, and T type intersection cleaner the new section is ready. Not only the geometry is precise, but also all entities used to it have exactly the same properties as in the source.

Less queries

And during the work, you did not one single time have to ask questions like What is the distance from here to there? How far will I offset this? Which layer are the gypsum board walls on? Which hatch pattern has that wall and how was it scaled and rotated?

What is it good for?

It is a replication or cloning tool for all kinds and sizes of patterns consisting of parallel lines or line-shaped or elongated entities. The selection and determining of the distances between the entities is made along a perpendicular cross section through the group of source entities.

Typically this would be a wall or an entire cross section of a floor plan as described. But also a parallel pipelines or cable groups, a street with all its borders and centerline, pedestrian paths, window profiles, air conditioning channels, note lines, balustrades, fences, you name it.

Features

This new type of multiple-draft-by-cloning tool is called SuperLiner. The tool features a number of supporting options to define, enhance and manage the way it works. The first release supports line, polyline, hatch, solid fill and trace entities. Support for 3dpoly, multiline, insert and xref in the next versions is in progress, as well as a whole family of tools basing on the cloning technique developed by Cadapter Software.

Settings

Basically, you don't need to do any settings at all. But you may want to customize the way it works, because there are some options embedded. The settings are mostly available during the work, if applicable, as placed into command line options. Made settings can be chosen to automatically be saved save at each command end and they can be any time listed in the text screen to check the status.

Repeat

You may choose to draw the last drawn pattern without reselecting the source. You may even use the last drawn pattern in a different drawing during the same session. The SuperLiner makes use of the Windows Clipboard to remember and transfer the pattern to another drawing. Only use of the clipboard for another purpose deletes the pattern from clipboard and you must reselect it for continued use.

Geometry

Drawn corners are mitered automatically as you draw, and you can close a drawn perimeter either directly or perpendicular to the first portion at starting point. You may select an angle to force the pattern in a given direction and a length for the next portion. The given angle overrides the ortho on and snapangle settings. You may use all normal Autocad methods for obtaining a point. The drawn portions can be undone step by step during the work, to restart from any previous point.

Offset

You can define the pattern to be drawn centered, left or right from the drawn reference line. You can define a further precise offset from this basic alignment line either to the left or to the right from drawing direction. And you can pick a drawn line to indicate that this line shall follow the reference line from that point on.

Polylines

Polylines may be exploded to lines or joined along the entire length of the polygonal result, or they can remain single consecutive polylines. Closed source polylines remain closed and you can choose to remove the miter joints and unite them to one single frame.

Hatch

Hatch angle can be set either to follow the drawn directions, remain in the angle of the source, or rotate to a preset global angle. You can also set a global scaling factor to change the hatch scale in all cloned entities as you run. With SuperLiner you can even draw only hatch! Just pull the selection line cross over a single piece of hatch and draw arbitrary portions of hatch ribbon with precisely the width of the source. The resulting hatches are always separated at each corner and not associative.

Centerline, Reference line

You may separately select to draw a centerline and the reference line, and set the layer and linetype used for them.

Group

Although the resulting entities are completely normal separate objects, it is many times useful to be able to select all of them in one portion together. To accomplish this, you may choose to group them at creation time.

In the future versions this group feature will possibly be enhanced to a method for individually or by pattern type naming, labeling and recording the created groups.

A group is selectable when the system variable pickstyle is set to 0. There is a toggle button supplied for this in SuperLiner toolbar.

How do I get this tool?

This new type of multiple-draft-by-cloning tool is downloadable at principal CAD download sites and at the creator's site

http://www.cadapter.com

Cadapter Software as sole reseller and copyright owner offers this supertool for testing and purchasing as shareware with 15 days' free full functionality in a small zip file that downloads in about 5 seconds.

A single seat license costs $60 and for network licenses you get a negotiable price reduction up to 70% depending on number of seats ordered.

All future versions, additions and updates for registered users of a program at Cadapter Software are free to download and use, and novelties will be annotated through email.

Oct.15. 2002

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SuperLiner

THE ONE AND ONLY PARALLEL PATTERN CLONER

Ver 1.0

OPTIONS MENU OVERVIEW

Command line options to start the program:

SUPERLINER or

SLR or SLINER starts the program using command line options.

In this first version the dialog interface is disabled.

A new Tool Type A completely new tool type, a parallel pattern creator draws unlimited amount of parallel entities with just one single stroke.