<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Reference > Dialogs > Drawing Dialogs > Advanced Tools Dialogs > Equipment Library > Display Preferences

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Database > Equipment Library

Drawing > Advanced Tools > Equipment Library

Commandline: le

Several Others

 

Explanation

This is where we determine the look of the block we are about to add to the drawing.

There are four tabs in this view that allow you to customize the appearance of the block you are about to create.

1.Stock Shapes

2.Mappable Terminals

3.User Defined Shapes

4.Mechanical Forms

 

 

 

Understanding the Settings Mechanism

Settings store the appearance and display mode of the Equipment Library. These settings determine the look of the created block. You can tell which settings were used to create the block by looking at the Equipment Library status bar:

 

 

WireCAD stores the settings used to create blocks in three different locations:

1.Device settings. If you create a block in a drawing we store the settings used to make the block with the device definition in the Equipment Library. These settings have priority.

2.Project settings. If you like the display of a block you can click the:

Doing so will set the current display settings as the Project default. All devices that do not currently have stored settings will then use the Project defaults.

3.Default settings. When no other settings are found we use the defaults.

 

Several controls are common to all tabs. We will go into those first.

 

Common Controls Options

•Body Color - Sets the color of Functional I/O and Concept block bodies. Has no effect on User Defined Shapes or Terminals. The geometry of the file determines the look.

•Creation Mode - Set by the UI. Leave it alone.

•Descriptor Locations - Shows the Descriptor Locations Map. Applies to Functional, Concept, and User Defined Shapes.

•Image Display Mode - Applies to Applies to Functional and Concept blocks.

 None - no image or cad block is inserted in the created block.

 Image - insert the image that is pointed to in the Image File Path of the Details tab for this device.

 DWGIcon - insert the DWG Icon in the DWG Icon File Path of the Details tab for this device.

•Image Position, Image Scale Factor

•Merge and Center - Centers identical text in the block. Applies to Functional and Concept blocks.

•Text Height - The height of all generated text.

•Spacing and other dimensional info:

•Vertically Center Pins

•Body Pen Width - The thickness of the line that represents the block body.

•Nudge Positions - Use to nudge the various text around.

•Tears and Bulge Factors - Tears are visual elements that represent to the reader of the document that the device does not display all of its available I/O. Tears use bulges. The greater the bulge factor the more dramatic the tear.

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•Set Current Display Properties as Project Default

•Reset Project Default

•Reset Device Settings

 

 

 

Stock Shapes Options

Here you choose from 18 stock shapes. We will not enumerate them here. Try clicking on them to see what they do.

 

 

Mappable Terminals Options

Here you can map the selected I/O on to terminals. Terminals are one or two port inline devices. If you select more that one record in the I/O tables we will continue to add terminals to accommodate the selection. If you select a terminal that has only an input port then any selected output records will be ignored.

 

Example showing multiple I/O selected and mapped on to a terminal that represents a full normal jack:

 

 

User Defined Shapes Options

 

 

Any CAD file can be used as a User Defined Shape. It just needs to be placed in the Shape Files folder:

%BLOCKS%\Shapes Files

 

The Display Properties with then scale and stretch the object while applying port data.

Example showing User Defined Shape with four ports applied:

 

 

Mechanical Forms Options

 

 

Mechanical Forms are hard-coded objects that get their dimensional data from the device definition and use it to render objects.