|
LloydB
|
|
|
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 20,
Visits: 123
|
I could be either asking a strange question or opening a can of worms or both - either way please don't kick me out and ban me from using Stardraw ever again :-)
I am just wondering why the main borderlines of all the products are in red? My understanding is the standard is black. When I download DXF files from equipment companies websites they are black and I was taught both in my theatre lighting training and in AV drawing land past to make them black. Even back in the days of actually drawing them when I owned a beautiful big counterweight drawing desk (oh how I miss my drawing table and actually drawing up plans and schematics) and drew by hand I had black ink for lines and red inc for text and changes.
I know (with apologies) I am making waaaaay too big a thing about this but I spend so much time every day clicking unlock and manually changing the line color back to black that for many of my regular items I have made a user defined version of the product so I don't loose time changing the line color - and it does add up.
Is there a setting to change this?
Could there be a setting to change this?
With apologies.
Lloyd :-)
|
|
|
|
|
Rob Robinson
|
|
|
Group: Administrators
Posts: 2.4K,
Visits: 9.1K
|
Hi Lloyd,
No apologies necessary. The fact is that it is down to historical conformity and, with a dataset of nearly 100,000 symbols and a history of over 25 years, the shackles of conformity are hard to break.
The genesis of the outline color dates to somewhere between your drawing desk and modern printing technology - specifically the very early 1990's (yes, our history goes back that far) - when the serious technical drawing tool was the pen plotter. With pen plotters one would use colors to select a pen (with maybe 8 - yes! 8! - available), and that pen would be a particular color - not necessarily the same as the color in the drawing - and thickness. So 'red' might have been color 1 - I forget the exact designation - and therefore pen 1, and pen 1 may have been a thick, black pen.
That's ancient history, of course.
As time passes, though, and a) our library grows and b) the number of existing/legacy drawings, generated by thousands of users around the world, grows, changing anything about the library has very serious consequences; we can't just change the way things look, arbitrarily, because then the current library won't 'play nicely' with existing data and/or company standards.
So, what we're talking about here really is a 'de facto' standard determined by legacy technology and bound by conformity to masses of existing data, generated both in-house and by users in the field.
There's the background, and it was a fun journey down memory lane, but in summary I believe that what would be really useful to you is a quick and easy way to set or change, globally, the outline color. Understood. Is that everything? (hey, the can of worms is open now....)
Kind regards, Rob Robinson Stardraw.com
|
|
|
|
|
LloydB
|
|
|
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 20,
Visits: 123
|
+xHi Lloyd,
No apologies necessary. The fact is that it is down to historical conformity and, with a dataset of nearly 100,000 symbols and a history of over 25 years, the shackles of conformity are hard to break.
The genesis of the outline color dates to somewhere between your drawing desk and modern printing technology - specifically the very early 1990's (yes, our history goes back that far) - when the serious technical drawing tool was the pen plotter. With pen plotters one would use colors to select a pen (with maybe 8 - yes! 8! - available), and that pen would be a particular color - not necessarily the same as the color in the drawing - and thickness. So 'red' might have been color 1 - I forget the exact designation - and therefore pen 1, and pen 1 may have been a thick, black pen.
That's ancient history, of course.
As time passes, though, and a) our library grows and b) the number of existing/legacy drawings, generated by thousands of users around the world, grows, changing anything about the library has very serious consequences; we can't just change the way things look, arbitrarily, because then the current library won't 'play nicely' with existing data and/or company standards.
So, what we're talking about here really is a 'de facto' standard determined by legacy technology and bound by conformity to masses of existing data, generated both in-house and by users in the field.
There's the background, and it was a fun journey down memory lane, but in summary I believe that what would be really useful to you is a quick and easy way to set or change, globally, the outline color. Understood. Is that everything? (hey, the can of worms is open now....) Firstly, I don't consider the 1990's ancient history. I can remember Woodstock so we all know that means I wasn't there but I do remember when America has a real space program and real cars! With That said. Yes Rob It would be nice to be able to globally make that outline color change and maybe also some text changes - like bolding the product name and titles but that's a separate can of worms and probably just a Lloyd thing. But the crux of my original question was yes a way to change that color globally would save me much much time in my already too long day. But I guess that is something to be looked into in the future..... Thanks Lloyd :-)
|
|
|
|
|
Alex Melsen
|
|
|
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 6,
Visits: 4
|
+x+xHi Lloyd,
No apologies necessary. The fact is that it is down to historical conformity and, with a dataset of nearly 100,000 symbols and a history of over 25 years, the shackles of conformity are hard to break.
The genesis of the outline color dates to somewhere between your drawing desk and modern printing technology - specifically the very early 1990's (yes, our history goes back that far) - when the serious technical drawing tool was the pen plotter. With pen plotters one would use colors to select a pen (with maybe 8 - yes! 8! - available), and that pen would be a particular color - not necessarily the same as the color in the drawing - and thickness. So 'red' might have been color 1 - I forget the exact designation - and therefore pen 1, and pen 1 may have been a thick, black pen.
That's ancient history, of course.
As time passes, though, and a) our library grows and b) the number of existing/legacy drawings, generated by thousands of users around the world, grows, changing anything about the library has very serious consequences; we can't just change the way things look, arbitrarily, because then the current library won't 'play nicely' with existing data and/or company standards.
So, what we're talking about here really is a 'de facto' standard determined by legacy technology and bound by conformity to masses of existing data, generated both in-house and by users in the field.
There's the background, and it was a fun journey down memory lane, but in summary I believe that what would be really useful to you is a quick and easy way to set or change, globally, the outline color. Understood. Is that everything? (hey, the can of worms is open now....) Firstly, I don't consider the 1990's ancient history. I can remember Woodstock so we all know that means I wasn't there but I do remember when America has a real space program and real cars! With That said. Yes Rob It would be nice to be able to globally make that outline color change and maybe also some text changes - like bolding the product name and titles but that's a separate can of worms and probably just a Lloyd thing. But the crux of my original question was yes a way to change that color globally would save me much much time in my already too long day. But I guess that is something to be looked into in the future..... Thanks Lloyd :-) Is there an update on this. We are an integrator doing an evaluation of Stardraw and indeed the esthetics are definitely holding us back at the moment. Thank you.
|
|
|
|
|
Rob Robinson
|
|
|
Group: Administrators
Posts: 2.4K,
Visits: 9.1K
|
The standards used by the Stardraw symbols library are fixed and arbitrary global changes are not supported, but symbols for your User Defined Products (UDPs) can employ any standards you wish.
Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com
|
|
|
|
|
Alex Melsen
|
|
|
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 6,
Visits: 4
|
+xThe standards used by the Stardraw symbols library are fixed and arbitrary global changes are not supported, but symbols for your User Defined Products (UDPs) can employ any standards you wish. Not the answer I was hoping for. But all clear, thank you sir.
|
|
|
|