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Custom GUI Setup

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Message 1 of 7
GabryvanWinden
926 Views, 6 Replies

Custom GUI Setup

As a CAD drawer and fanatical gamer I was wondering about a certain concept: Is it possible to setup a customisable GUI grid for autocad? I imagine one could make a 15 / 20 grid where you can store your most used commands (a bit like tool palette's can be used). all of the grid squares are then assigned to a key that is within the reach of you left hand.  I'll try to illustrate it:

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This grid setup is used in strategy games like starcraft 2, and allows for a very quick acces to commands. Some commands will send you to another menu, i.e. pressing 1,Q,A or Z will give you a total of 80 additional commands (this makes a total of 96 commands in the reach of one hand). The strong part of it is that is a visual grid, so you can easily memorise the location of commands.  When compared to shortcuts in autocad, you'll rarely have all commands accessible with just one hand. The main strength of the tool should be that it is customisable, every user can store other commands.  Is there already some addon on the market that allows for a custom GUI grid or could anyone here program this? 

6 REPLIES 6
Message 2 of 7
SomeBuddy
in reply to: GabryvanWinden

Hi,

 

Such an input device used to be called tablet, controlled with a kind of mouse like device called puck, and was very in vogue up to AutoCAD 12 I think, after what the new Windows integration allowed for the toolbars and stuff.

 

If you look hard, you should find one somewhere out there (or adopt one of the contemporary Intuous digitizing tablets) and if you look in the CUI interface, under the Legacy zone, you will see that Autodesk still supports those table menus and I think there still are diehard tablet users out there. You will have to plot the "Tablet Overlay.dwg"(stored in Autocad Samples folder, located in the installation directory and configure it afterwards.

 

Find one, configure it and it might be what you are looking for. Follow the following link for more on the subject:

 

http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=7365

 

HTH

Message 3 of 7

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it. But how does this allow for a dynamic menu? For example when I press one button, does this allow to open up a new menu on the same grid? The tablet looks very static. And somehow you'd think there was a good reason why those things disappeared :p. 

Message 4 of 7


@GabryvanWinden wrote:

As a CAD drawer and fanatical gamer I was wondering about a certain concept: Is it possible to setup a customisable GUI grid for autocad? I imagine one could make a 15 / 20 grid where you can store your most used commands (a bit like tool palette's can be used). all of the grid squares are then assigned to a key that is within the reach of you left hand.  I'll try to illustrate it:

1

2

3

4

5

Q

W

E

R

T

A

S

D

F

G

Z

X

C

V

B

 

.... Some commands will send you to another menu, i.e. pressing 1,Q,A or Z will give you a total of 80 additional commands .....  When compared to shortcuts in autocad, you'll rarely have all commands accessible with just one hand. ....


You can define/redefine command aliases however you want, and put lots in the left-hand area, though you would want to be careful about existing alias definitions.  That wouldn't get you the call-up-another-menu-for-more-choices situation, but you could get a powerful lot of things in there with multi-character aliases.

 

Not being a gamer myself, I'm not sure how those things work.  Would you want the command to be triggered simply by pressing the key, without needing to follow it with space or Enter as with an alias?  If so, you'll need to use Keyboard shortcuts involving Ctrl or Ctrl+Shift.  After all, when you press the C key alone, how is AutoCAD supposed to know whether you want your custom GUI command, or you're planning to then hit space for the standard alias for Circle, or you're planning to enter more letters for Copy, or Chamfer, or Change, etc.?  Same with E and Erase, Ellipse, Extend, etc.

 

But with Ctrl and Ctrl+Shift combinations, you can assign things to be triggered without space/Enter.  Are you familiar with how to do that?  At the bottom of the Categories list in the Keyboard tab in the Customize window is just plain "AutoCAD Commands," from which you can assign a combination to anything you like.  But again, be careful about those that are already defined -- pick Show All to see what's already assigned.

 

Whether you can get some such keystrokes to connect you to additional choices available by similar means, I have my doubts, but you can have even more complex things than plain command names, if defined in Pull-down or Toolbar menu items, triggered by shortcuts.  Those could include things like Lisp (getkword) functions, which would allow you to use aliases that are used for other things outside such functions.  So if properly set up, you could, for example, hit Ctrl-Shift-A and then type C [space] to get Cylinder instead of Circle.  Whether that's better than just making an alias of something like CY for Cylinder, you would have to decide.

Kent Cooper, AIA
Message 5 of 7
SomeBuddy
in reply to: GabryvanWinden

If you are going to do your part and read about this stuff and about how it works, you will find out that with a click on the tablet you can change the displayed menu. And I seriously think that the new ribbon interface is also a good candidate for what you want to achieve.

Message 6 of 7
SteveAdams8888
in reply to: SomeBuddy

I'm sure there are some very interesting ways in Acad to do this.

 

You may also want to google: "visual tablet", "z-keys" or "x-keys" and "Logitech G11 keyboard".

Thanks,
Steve

C3d 2010 (no SP)
Win7

Message 7 of 7

If you are CAD drawer and fanatical gamer try this tools: click here

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