Subject:
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Another idea
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Thu, 2 Aug 2001 15:11:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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415 times
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For the CAD system I'm developing, I'm planning to have multiple ways of
issuing commands:
Drop-down and pop-up menus
Speedbuttons
Keyboard shortcuts (configurable to user preferences)
and...
Command line interface (like in AutoCAD)
In AutoCAD I often find it fastest to use the command line interface. For
example, if I want to draw a line, I can type "line" or just enough
characters to specify a unique command (e.g., "l") and thus avoid having to
drag the mouse all the way across the display to click a line button, then
drag it back to the work area. For this program I imagine commands like
roll 90
(to rotate the selected pieces around the x axis; there would also be pitch
for the z axis, yaw for the y axis, etc.)
flip y
(to flip the selected pieces in the y direction)
offset y +5
(to move a part 5 ldraw units in the +y direction)
hsnap 20
(to set horizontal snap granularity (distance) in LDraw units; there would
also be a vsnap command)
snap on|off
shadow on|off
zoom all|window|previous
etc.
...the idea being that *every* command would be available through both menus
and the command line interface, while the user would be able to assign up to
26 commands to normal keyboard shortcuts, and pick which speedbuttons he
wanted.
It would be neat if we could develop a standard convention for command names
and syntaxes across future CAD programs.
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Another idea
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| (...) ooohhh... that I like :) (...) why just 26 commands? if you just allow two meta keys (say, alt and ctrl), you get 26*2^2=104 shortcuts... and if you allow shift as well, 208! not saying anyone could remember them all, but why limit the (...) (23 years ago, 2-Aug-01, to lugnet.cad.dev)
| | | Re: Another idea
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| (...) Cool, I love keyboard interfaces. Keep in mind that we already have a something of standard keyboard convention in place. The LEdit key commands. They may not be the best, but they're short and they're built into several of the CAD programs (...) (23 years ago, 2-Aug-01, to lugnet.cad.dev)
| | | Re: Another idea
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| (...) Please, oh please make it "rotate x 90" (like "offset" command below). (...) I assume this is equivalent to "rotate y 180". (...) I think these probably need to be "snap [x|y|z] 20" as well, unless you're gonna implement them separately for (...) (23 years ago, 3-Aug-01, to lugnet.cad.dev)
| | | Re: Another idea
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| (...) Gary, this sounds great! The best CAD keyboard interface I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot!) was that of the VersaCAD package of the late 80's. Every single possible command (I think) in the system was accessible by a single keystroke. And (...) (23 years ago, 3-Aug-01, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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