a personal wish-list
HelenAA
🖼️ 10 images Surveyor
Don't know if there's an official wish-list thread - if not, I'm starting an unofficial one.
I really wish there was a ruler toolbar, because I can't measure using DISTANCE. My hands are way too shake-y for the command to work with me. It always, always, always gives me either a zero distance or something like 1.3".
Comments
I immediately thought of a workaround for this in the meantime.
Would it work for you if you picked a scale bar symbol for that style and rotated it (press CTRL+SHIFT and move the mouse) to match the line you were trying to measure?
Alternatively, a homemade vector symbol of a series of concentric rings at 1, 5, 10 or 50 map unit spacing (an appropriate spacing of some kind) might be even better, since you wouldn't have to rotate it at all but just hover over one end of the line you want to measure.
I'd not know how to, and by extension do it and get an appropiately accurate tool, @Loopysue because of my shakes as a result of ageing on top of cerebral palsy (or is it the other way round? I can never tell!).
I thought a map i've gone back to was 600 x 600 so I drew an empty map, keeping SCREEN and MAP BORDER. The map I'm working on has neither and cheerfuly inserted it into the map only to discover it isn't anywhere near those dimensions. So I went to DISTANCE and tried to measure again, with the frustration of my OP. GRRRRRR!
Ah, I see.
Maybe generate a temporary grid using 'Hex or Square overlay' in the Draw menu, and count the squares?
CTRL+Z to undo the grid once you've counted.
that's much more doable - plus if I leave the nunbers in the setup! Thank, Sue - youre a geunius!
You're welcome :)
I'm not really a genius. I just like puzzles.
I would like to say that a top and side ruler would be good. I would also like the mouse to give distance options. It would be great to be able to add guide lines as well.
I've gotten the habit of creating what I call the drawing grid - squared and scaled. I later hide it when rendering the map.
how does it work for you, @Glitch ? I have a hidden grid on my current map but whenever I want to ungroup/erase I do that and the grid appears!
I occasionally have issues with selection grabbing items that are on hidden sheets. Zooming in as tight as possible and using hidden sheets seems to help reduce the problem.
Actual insertion of the grid - use standard add grid, using the square option. Make sure to set the size to what you want to work with. You can also add labels to help if you wish. Once created, rename the sheet Grid - Drawing. Using the Grid, Ortho and Snap options help as well.
Thanks @Glitch
Not sure how you manage to grab things that are on hidden sheets. I've never been able to do that myself. But do note that if you hide a sheet, then use a drawing tool or other command that needs to operate on that sheet, it will become unhidden, and then entities on it can be selected.
In any case, when it comes to hiding/hiding the grid, I recommend doing it using layers instead. Make sure the grid layer (usually HEX/SQUARE GRID) is both hidden and frozen. (and never unfreeze/thaw it when showing it, it should always stay frozen, as this prevents it from being accidentally manipulated when you are working on something else.)
To show/hide the layer from the command line, use the TOGLF command. This will hide the layer if visible, and show it if not. This command accepts a wildcard filter, so you can simply type
TOGLF GRIDto toggle the visibility of the HEX/SQUARE GRID layer. (Of course, the filter means EVERY layer with the word GRID in the name will be toggled, but you usually only have one).
There are a few different options for what to display. Sometimes I have to edit the origin to get it to do what I want at the moment.
Once you plop down the first point of your line or poly, you can tell the next point to be @x,y from that point.
That said, I also generally have at least one temporary grid sheet, often a ruler sheet, and sometimes a guide sheet.
Maybe turn down the mouse sensitivity