AutoCAD 2012

[#1]

I know that this is not strictly an AutoCAD 2012 issue, BUT as her CAD teacher it’s my job to do the best I can for all of my students so I’m reaching out and asking for help.

I have a severely disabled student; she can only move her head (and that is severely limited). She has a head mouse to point with. She can left and right click her mouse by using a puffer tube in her mouth. But she can’t scroll or pan easily, (Center mouse wheel something easy for us). I have enlarged the icons, enlarged the text, high contrast background, moved the command line up to the ribbon, and she uses an onscreen keyboard (the default keyboard that comes with windows). But inputting numbers, zooming and panning is very hard; even with icons it is painfully slow. Note this is a main streamed student, who is at peer level.  She has a full time nurse and aid to help her.

I have a second monitor mounted close to me so I can see what she is doing, but I don’t have an easy way for her to signal me when she needs help. Anyone know how to write a lisp program to flash a red square to catch my attention? Example - Pick a help Icon and a square flashes etc.….

So simply put HELP!

                Anyone know of an adaptive onscreen keyboard?

Anyone know of adaptive equipment the will replicate a two button mouse with scroll wheel? Or  a way to mimic the scroll wheel under the above conditions.

                I’m looking for anyone who has experience with this type of adaptive needs

 I'm not looking for hand-outs just ideals and a better path to help this student make using autoCAD easier.

The student is game to try anything that will help increase her speed and decrease her movement. (Lots of head movement strains her)

Any ideas?

Thanks

Ken James

Note: New address and Phone number!!

Drafting Design Technology

Berks Career & Technology Center - East Campus

3307 Friedensburg Rd.

Oley, PA 19547

Kdjames@berkscareer.com

To connect directly to the class use the following

Telephone- (610) 987-6201

Fax - (610) 987-6106

Please note- Phone options have changed, listen to the menu

• Dial 1 for the East Campus
• Dial 1 because you know the extension
• Dial Extension 3532

[#2]

Not sure if this will help, but one thing I can think of is to learn to use command aliases. For example, p is for pan, and -p is for panning along a straight line. At least that's less typing on the command line.

I found a gem in an old book 1001 tips and tricks for AutoCAD 12 -- so I made it into a macro button that zooms extents and then zooms .9x of that. I created it using command line entries (z;e;;.9x. That backs you all the way out quickly if need be.

The only other thing i can think of is the scroll bars on the right and bottom - are they displayed?

Sorry I have no Lisp routine though...

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ken,

We will help find someone.  I have reached out to some friends that may have ideas, and they have the development/LISP knowledge.  I have also notified the moderator to duplicate your forum post to the AutoCAD Customizations Forum.  That forum has many peers that do LISP and programming.

Anything to help, and Happy Holidays!

Joshua

[#4]

I'm pretty sure I used to have a macro that would invoke the dos prompt and then the "netsend" command to send pop up messages to others on the network. Someone here may have some insight on that route. If anything it may be a way outside of cad to send a message fairly easy. I would think that could be incorporated into a one button routine from the desktop or something. I hope I'm not way off here. I am not an IT guy. I looked up netsend command years ago because the company I worked for didn't want all of the instant messaging traffic.

[#5]

here is a thread that might help. Looks like net send does not work in windows 7.

http://www.augi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6411

hope it helps.

[#6]

yea, the messenger service in windows (used by net send) turned out to be a marvelous vector for malware.spam.  IIRC WinXP SP1 shut it off

[#7 · Accepted solution]

As I've already shared with Ken, I've created a .NET app that writes a message to the screen to get attention:

http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interface/2011/12/implementing-an-autocad-comma...

Kean