Templot Club Archive 2007-2020
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 09:38 from: Martin Wynne
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Dear all, A poll.  I would be interested to know which of these lesser-known Templot features you use or intend to use. Please tick all the relevant boxes and then click the Vote button. I'm not intending to remove any of them, but it would be interesting to know which are most used, and then to set the relative priorities when upgrading and modifying things. Thanks for your help. regards, Martin. |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 13:18 from: Martin Wynne
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Thanks for the responses so far. I'm rather surprised that currently 60% of users say you use the pad scalebar.  Just to clarify, that's the one which appears when you go to pad > pad grid options > scalebar options > show ... scalebar menu items. On all recent versions it's off by default. Although it looks pretty and technical, in practice I never found much use for it -- which is why I turned it off. So I would be interested to know how you are using it. The ruler tool is much more useful for measuring things. ALT+left click to set one end of the ruler and and ALT+right click to set the other, and read off the distance between them. These clicks also put the dimensions in the read-outs on the jotter. regards, Martin. |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 13:41 from: Glen Suckling
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Martin Wynne wrote: Thanks for the responses so far.Hi Martin, Having grown up with and been educated in the imperial measurement system, and living in a part of the world that still uses it, I find the five inch imperial ruler at the bottom of the pad a handy reference which is quicker and more accurate than doing mental conversions. Of course, when I want something real accurate I use the metric converter. Regards, Glen |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 13:56 from: Martin Wynne
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Glen Suckling wrote:I find the five inch imperial ruler at the bottom of the pad a handy reference which is quicker and more accurate than doing mental conversions.Hi Glen, Many thanks for the info. Don't forget that you can have the ruler tool showing inch units even if you leave the grid on mm units. tools > ruler > show ruler tools > ruler > inch units menu items. ALT+left click to set one end of the ruler and and ALT+right click to set the other, and read off the distance between them. These clicks also put the dimensions in the read-outs on the jotter. p.s. to Mac users -- are these clicks available on a Mac? regards, Martin. |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 16:36 from: donald peters
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I am surprised to read that I voted on these issues before. It reveals to how fast my dotage progresses. My reason for the scale bar is much the same as Glen's, familiarity and background, except that I am 'trapped' in this Mickey Mouse millimeter world (rods, poles, perches, feet and inches now taboo) trying to visualize such things as what does 873mm look like. regards all, Donald ps When did I vote prior to now? |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 17:42 from: Martin Wynne
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donald peters wrote:ps When did I vote prior to now?Hi Donald, I started this poll at 9.30am today, so if you have already forgotten voting the first time, perhaps a cup of coffee? If you are referring to my comment: I'm rather surprised that currently 60% of users say you use the pad scalebar.I meant of course 60% of users who had responded up until then. That number has since reduced with further voting. regards, Martin. |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 17:48 from: John Lewis
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I too got the message "You voted on this poll before. However you can change your vote if you wish." immediately after I voted. Presumably it mens "Your vote has been recorded, but you can change it if you wish." | ||
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 17:53 from: Raymond
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Martin Wynne wrote:donald peters wrote:It did the same thing to me and I know I have only voted once.ps When did I vote prior to now?Hi Donald, Regards Raymond |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 18:13 from: Martin Wynne
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Oh I see. Sorry. That's the label on the Vote button -- the two should be close together. It would be confusing if the Vote button reappeared without some acknowledgement that it had already been clicked once. The poll function on here hasn't been used much and still has the original American wording. I will update the script with UK English shortly. regards, Martin. |
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posted: 2 Jul 2010 18:57 from: Martin Wynne
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I have now changed the wording in the script. After voting in a poll it now says "Thanks for voting in this poll. You can change your vote if you wish." and the button text changes from Vote, to Change Vote. It's tricky, because the same words appear 3 seconds after voting or when visiting the topic again 3 years later. Finding a form of words which will do for both situations isn't so easy. Aycan got it wrong, sorry for the confusion. regards, Martin. |
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posted: 3 Jul 2010 11:14 from: Jonathan Wells click the date to link to this post click member name to view archived images |
I'd not been aware of these lesser known features so I had a look round for them and tried them out. The ones I don't think are useful at all are: Paper bunching; Stay visible help text; zoom target ring and pad scalebar. Spot zoom seems useful but it's always into the middle of the pad which makes the zoom target ring redundant. Metric - Imperial - scale size calculators - yes keep that for as long as it doesn't interfere with the application's efficiency. The rest are nice features but I'm not too bothered if they go. However DXF Import and Export are the two features of Templot that should be retained to interact with other CAD software. Perhaps other CAD formats could be considered? |
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posted: 3 Jul 2010 12:03 from: Martin Wynne
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Jonathan Wells wrote: I'd not been aware of these lesser known features so I had a look round for them and tried them out. The ones I don't think are useful at all are: Paper bunching; Stay visible help text; zoom target ring and pad scalebar. Spot zoom seems useful but it's always into the middle of the pad which makes the zoom target ring redundant.Hi Jonathan, Many thanks for your comments. I've no plans remove any of these features. But I am interested to know which of them are deserving of further attention in line with other developments, and which can be left as they are. For example I am currently working on the Sketchbook feature. At present this is entirely uni-directional -- Templot data can go on the sketchbook, but as yet there is no data transfer in the other direction. It would seem useful to be able to use the spacing ring tool for example on the sketchbook -- but it's complicated and not worth bothering with if hardly anyone actually uses the spacing ring! Spot zoom essentially repeats the mouse wheel zooming, but with greater precision. It's also useful for those users without a mouse wheel. There is an alternative scale zoom mouse action which centres on the location of the grid origin instead of the pad centre. Perhaps that should have the keyboard shortcut instead of spot zoom. The idea of the zoom target ring is that you can move the relevant pad feature into it before zooming. This is an alternative to dragging a zoom rectangle around the feature. It's difficult to use any CAD formats other than text-mode DXF because they are all proprietary to other software and would need to be licensed at great expense. There is an "open DWG" format, but Autodesk have introduced security features which make it difficult to use. An alternative is the PDF format which is increasingly being used in CAD programs. The next version of Templot will be able to create PDF files natively, and you can create them now using one of the virtual-printer generators such as Win2PDF. regards, Martin. |
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