PeterT

Also, Command 5 (Top/Plan) will restore the view to 0° from whatever angle you are displaying.

I am surprised to see the original Bridge Line Tool was not fixed in the 2017 SP4 update. I am sure this is an easy fix for the engineers, but it took me several days to write my own Bridge Line Tool in Vectorscript. I guess I must be the only one using this tool, as it seems of no importance to anyone else. Besides, I am sure the there were much more important things to fix. I do not care about Bug VB-138438 anymore. I will just use my own tool. As far as I am concerned, you can just remove the broken Bridge Line Tool from the Application. Thanks to everyone who helped me get my own Bridge tool working, apparently it was not wasted time.

Hi, I have an event enabled plug-in that is my sheet number. I double click it and a dialog opens up to populate all my sheet numbers. I have always had the sheet number locked so that when I double click it it does not accidentally move. Several versions ago, It would open the dialog even though it was locked, but more recently, it no longer opens, and gives me the locked object message. Now I have to unlock the sheet number, double click it to update the sheet numbers then close the dialog and re-lock the sheet number. This sort of removes the protection I had of not accidentally moving the sheet number when editing. The question I have is whether there is anyway that I can write code into the plug-in such that when I double click the locked plugin it will unlock to open the dialog, then re-lock when I close the dialog. I tried adding the UnLckObjs and LckObjs calls in the script but it did not work. Is there any way to do this?

OK, I had them both at 600 dpi. I do not understand how you can have a high resolution image at 72 dpi and only 26 x 2o pixels. I will reduce them to 72, but that does not sound high resolution to me. Peter

Raymond, I do not know how you got them to import. I get the same message every time. I even renamed them the same as you did. Peter

O.K, I am about to give up on this. I have a 26x20 pixel PNG Icon named BLIcon.png, and a 52x40 pixel PNG icon named BLIcon@2x.png. I Open the BLIcon.png file in Preview, Photoshop, or Graphic Converter and they all tell me it is a 26x20 PNG file. In VectorScript I hit the Import PNG Icon... button, select the BLIcon.png file, and get the message that "The PNG file is the wrong size. The dimensions must be 26x20 pixels". I have verified 20 times that it is a 26x20 PNG file yet VectorScript sees it as something else. I cannot spend my whole day trying to import a stupid ICON. I guess I will just have two accept the low res icon since VS will not take the file that it asks for. Here are the two Icons, as I do not know where to go from here.

Josh, Since Vectorworks and the Plug-ins reside on seven different workstations in my office, are you suggesting I put two image files on each of seven workstations? Or can a workstation copy of Vectorworks pull the icons from our server? I typically Paste the icon in on my workstation, how will the other workstations find it? Is there anything about this on the Developer Page? I have not seen it. Peter

Josh, As you Paste the image into the Properties dialog, what directory do I put the High res image into? Where does Vectorworks store the image that was pasted in? Is that where I need to put the high res image? Thanks, Peter

On another note, when pasting in a 26x20 pixel tool Icon in the Edit Definition Properties tab, how do you get a high resolution Icon. I made my Icon in Graphic Converter, but when I pasted it in, I got some sort of a message saying that it would be a low resolution Icon if I do not make a high-resolution counterpart, or something like that. What is the technique to get a high resolution tool Icon?

Pat, It appears that if you use __NNA_DO_NOT_CHANGE as your Parameter alternate name, that makes it permanently hidden. You do not the seem to be able to make it visible again with SetParameterVisibility(h, 'parameter name', TRUE); Is that correct? Peter

All, I have gone one better than your suggestions. I have set my Angle and Sweep to 179.999 and this also fixes the flipping problem. I realize that a 180 and a -180 sweep get you to the same place but the direction (Positive or Negative) should draw the sweep one way or the other. This must be a 2017 bug with ArcByCenter as it works fine in 2016 at 180.

Josh, Thanks for the tips. Raymond also gave me some of the same information and cleaned up my script. Already did this in the second posting of my code. Not sure what you are asking here. Just like the Nemetschek Bridge Line tool, I only want to see the Cover Weight field if I check the Set Cover Weight check box. I only want to be able to adjust the cover weight of the straight line. There is no cover weight of the Arc. The Arc line weight is just set by the document default line weight. The reason I did this originally was that if I drew the shorter Cover weight line first it was putting the object handles at the ends of the shorter line not at the end points of the arc. So I first drew a full-length line to establish the full-length, then deleted it and drew the adjusted shorter length. Not sure why this does not happen with Raymond's corrections. But if you comment out the drawing of the first line in my original code, you will see that when the object is drawn, the handles are inset from the ends of the arc. Not so true. If you draw an Arc of 9 mils and a cover weight of 17 (or more) mils, the ends of the cover weight line will stick out further than the Arc, and you will end up with white gaps in you wire on each side of the Bridge line. This object is not for just drawing in space, it is for drawing a bridge over crossing wires on an electrical plan. Wires on an electrical plan are rarely straight, so to cover the curved wire lines you need to bump up the thickness of the cover so that it hides the curving line that it is covering. I really shouldn't even have to be writing this script, but the inherent Bridge Line tool has cover behind the Arc which it should not. If you want to see what the Bridge line tool should draw, draw one in VW 2014. That is the last version that drew the Bridge line correctly. I am still waiting for the powers that be to fix the tool, so I decide to write my own tool. Maybe most people who draw electrical plans just cross their wires and do not use the tool, but really that is not correct. Also, it is odd that in version 2016, the original tool that I wrote works perfectly. It only has the arc flipping sides in version 2017.

Pat or Raymond, One more question. Why is it that when you first place the object, or click on the tool preferences button and the "Object Properties" box comes up, the Cover Weight setting is visible, even though the Set Cover Weight checkbox is not checked. It works properly in the OIP but not on the Object Properties dialog. Shouldn't they be the same? O.K., I just looked at the Nemetschek Bridge Line tool and it is the same thing with the Object Properties dialog. I guess the Object Properties dialog ignores the SetParameterVisibility calls and displays all parameters regardless of their visibility settings. Peter

Raymond, Thanks for the cleanup. Not sure why I had all the trigonometry in there, but I was having trouble getting the handles at the ends of the arc rather than at the ends of the shorter cover weight line. I will have to examine your fix as shorter is definitely better. And of course I forgot about Pushing and Popping the attributes, which I have used many times before. I guess I was just focusing on getting the Arc to draw properly. Thanks, Peter

Pat, If you comment out the RotatePoint(0,0,45); you will see that the line draws at 45° to the arc, so I have to rotate the line to be in the same orientation as the arc. ( maybe there is a better way to draw the line so I do not have to rotate it after it is drawn, but I could not find it). And RotatePoint must assume degrees because it rotates the line 45 degrees. As for the "swp :=180; and the IF flip THEN swp := -180; that is just changing the sweep direction of the arc from positive to negative, which flips the arc to the opposite side of the line when you check the "Flip" checkbox on the OIP (Just like the built-in Bridge Line tool). ArcByCenter just draws the arc. It starts in the center "bridgeline/2,0" (half the linelength), and the radius is "bridgeline/2" (half the linelength again) and the angle is 180 and the sweep(swp) is a variable ( either 180 or -180 depending on the Flip checkbox). And if the commented out lines are confusing, here is a cleaned up version without comments: PROCEDURE BridgeLineNew; VAR bridgelength : REAL; setcoverweight : BOOLEAN; coverweight : INTEGER; flip : BOOLEAN; cursize : INTEGER; R : LONGINT; G : LONGINT; B : LONGINT; P : LONGINT; result : BOOLEAN; objn : STRING; objh : HANDLE; objrech : HANDLE; wallh : HANDLE; adj : REAL; swp : REAL; obj : HANDLE; BEGIN result := GetCustomObjectInfo(objn,objh,objrech,wallh); IF result THEN BEGIN bridgelength := PLINELENGTH; setcoverweight := PSET_COVER_WEIGHT; coverweight := PCOVER_WEIGHT; flip := PFLIP; IF NOT setcoverweight THEN SetParameterVisibility(objh,'Cover Weight', FALSE); SetParameterVisibility(objh, 'LineLength', FALSE); cursize:= FPenSize; FPenFore(R, G, B); P := FPenPatN; PenSize(coverweight); PenFore(65535, 65535, 65535); PenPat(2); Line((bridgelength)*sin(Deg2Rad(45)),(bridgelength)*sin(Deg2Rad(45))); obj := LNewObj; DelObject(obj); adj := (coverweight*.0254); MoveTo(adj/2,adj/2); Line((bridgelength)*sin(Deg2Rad(45))-adj,(bridgelength)*sin(Deg2Rad(45))-adj); RotatePoint(0,0,-45); PenSize(cursize); PenFore(R, G, B); PenPat(P); swp := 180; IF flip THEN swp := -180; ArcByCenter(bridgelength/2,0,bridgelength/2,180,swp); END; END; Run (BridgeLineNew);