Copy & Increment Text

Hi,

Something that has bugged me for years with the copy & increment text is that you can only use the command in a verb-noun mode, not in a noun-verb mode.  Here's my regular situation...  I have a detail sheet with a grid of lines.  A certain distance from each intersection of the grid, I have a detail number.  Of course the detail numbers are each incremented by one.  So if I used a standard copy element command, I would select my text element, hit the copy element icon, pick my grid intersection as my "from" location, and then pick my next grid intersection as my "to" location.  (Select element first, then select tool to use with that element--noun-verb).  With the Copy & Increment Text tool, I can not select my element first.  So if I want to use it, I have to zoom way out, so that when I snap to my grid intersection, the detail number is in the locate circle and then I can zoom back in to place my copies.  Why can't the Copy & Increment Text tool work in both verb-noun, and noun-verb modes?

--Thanks,
--Robert

P.S. I've also see forums asking for a "number of copies" option.  This would be useful on occasion.

Parents
  • There is certainly room for improvement there.

    Another thing that is rather annoying is that it only works on texts and not on text nodes. When you place a text, even something as simple as A1, in a DWG then text is always converted to a text node wich means the copy increment text tool doesn't work at all when working in a DWG. Even saving the DWG as a DGN will still have the tool not work on text originating from the DWG (even after dropping the complex status to simple text).

    If they're going to work on this tool they might as well consider adding the option of incrementing the text instead of the number. e.g. from 7A to 7B, 7C, etc.

Reply
  • There is certainly room for improvement there.

    Another thing that is rather annoying is that it only works on texts and not on text nodes. When you place a text, even something as simple as A1, in a DWG then text is always converted to a text node wich means the copy increment text tool doesn't work at all when working in a DWG. Even saving the DWG as a DGN will still have the tool not work on text originating from the DWG (even after dropping the complex status to simple text).

    If they're going to work on this tool they might as well consider adding the option of incrementing the text instead of the number. e.g. from 7A to 7B, 7C, etc.

Children
  • Since this is a preexisting issue I brought this out into the light for all to share input.  If this is a much desired feature I would reccommend putting up a poll to see community interest and then have a change request files on it.

  • Several Change Requests have already been filed for this: CR# 20581, CR#103610 and CR#103442

  • There is an issue with allowing this command in the noun-verb fasion.  What if you had elements selected that did not allow this type of operation.  Select your entire design and then fire off the command, now what?  Also what if you selected multiple things that the command did work on.  100, 10, 22A  Should we only allow the command to work in in the fashion where noun = 1 text element?  If you have noun = multiple or noun=n text elements then we go to the workflow of verb noun?

    Koert,

    When working with textnodes how should we handle A1/B2 on multiple lines?  (simple example I know)  Or would it be ok to limit the command if there are multiple lines of text?

    Thanks for your thoughts on this.

  • An option to increase either the number or the text, and a first/last option should be sufficient for most if not all reasonable cases.

    If there are three lines and all lines contain numbers, then they won't be able to change the number on the second line, but I haven't seen text this used like that. There a bunch of lsp routines out there that do similar things, some with few, some with more options.

  • Hi,

    Don't you hate it when there are no right answers?  

    The check spelling command ignores all invalid elements...

    When would a person want to increment more than one text element by the same increment at the same time?  I guess if on my detail sheet I had the top detail numbers filled in, I could increment them all by one as I'm going to the next row...

    For me and my little issue, I would be fine limiting the selection to a single element.  As an alternate, Microstation could have a a prompt saying to use Ctrl-Click to set a new origin in the verb-noun mode, or something like that.. Or if you allowed the noun-verb, ctrl-click to add elements to selection.

    I have no good answers, just ideas.

    --Thanks,

    --Robert