topic Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality in Documentation

Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Anonymous — Fri, 19 May 2023 13:50:43 GMT

Despite finding a wish dating from around 2004 there seems to have been little to no movement to increase our text edit functionality. While I totally get ArchiCAD isn't a word processing program we find the text is incredibly clunky to use when trying to produce a lot of text, notes & lists.

The current frustration is the ability to convert from lower case to caps, as all caps is a council requirement here.

Have I missed something and this is possible, do we have to install an add-on, or do we just keep waiting while copying to word, converting to caps and copying back through!!

https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=1524

TIA Joe

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 19:07:54 GMT

I don't think you can use spell checker with all caps anyway. ?
I see that the new ARCHICAD-TALK Forum automatically makes all caps for topic titles so I can't keep using ArchiCAD instead of ARCHICAD

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Erwin Edel — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 08:36:54 GMT

I break up long bits of text into blocks for each paragraph, that at least makes editing a lot easier.

For caps conversion you are stuck with copy/pasting as far as I know...

You could maybe cheat with an all caps font.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Laszlo Nagy — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 11:34:10 GMT

If you are working with a lot of text, you could do the whole thing in Word, and then copy the result, then start a Text Block and paste it there. Most of the formatting should come through properly.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2018 22:52:21 GMT

Thanks folks, looks like we're going to have to continue working with our current workflow. Very frustrating when you get manufacturers standard details etc and have to re-write every note in CAPS!!

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Wed, 30 May 2018 13:13:42 GMT

PrendosJoe wrote:
Thanks folks, looks like we're going to have to continue working with our current workflow. Very frustrating when you get manufacturers standard details etc and have to re-write every note in CAPS!!

Not a problem is it? I keep Microsoft Word open all the time just for that reason.
Copy and Paste. https://www.screencast.com/t/DUDHkQDdv

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 02:11:52 GMT

From our perspective it's pretty basic text functionality & an additional step that really shouldn't be required, especially in a program as intelligent in other ways such as ArchiCAD. It may not take a lot of additional time, but it still does take time & unfortunately time = money in this capitalist world of ours!

Steve wrote:
PrendosJoe wrote:
Thanks folks, looks like we're going to have to continue working with our current workflow. Very frustrating when you get manufacturers standard details etc and have to re-write every note in CAPS!!
Not a problem is it? I keep Microsoft Word open all the time just for that reason.
Copy and Paste.
2018-05-30_6-12-03.png
https://www.screencast.com/t/DUDHkQDdv

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Paul King — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 05:08:11 GMT

Totally agree - this is essential functionality - for example when there is a need to convert an existing project with hundreds of separate notes from one text format to the other (facing this right now!)

We are so long overdue for a global graphical style management system, with one central place to manage and update all text, notes, dimensions, marker types etc

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 06:15:46 GMT

Yes. It does seem like something very useful to everyone. Select All Text, Select All Dimensions, Select All Labels ... way too much work for anything more than a single drawing something. An entire project? That's a lot of work. And it should be so easy. I bet this is something that could be done with a Python script, but if it can be done like that, then it ought to be a feature of the program so we don't have to become coders. Perhaps it is more complicated than it seems. I wouldn't know.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

M Cochran — Thu, 14 Mar 2019 20:38:20 GMT

There is a website you can use to convert your text to all caps: https://convertcase.net

The spell check in ARCHICAD will check words in all caps, if you have Microsoft Office set to do so. Open Word, click Options on the very bottom left, and then click on Proofing. Make sure that “Ignore words in UPPERCASE” is unchecked. If this box is checked, the spell check will not proof any words in all caps.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Erwin Edel — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 08:11:34 GMT

See I already wrote this, but in terms of billable hours I would just forego our 'house style / format' and select all text blocks and swap them to something like PERPETUA TITLING MT (just having a quick look at the CAPS fonts here) and move on.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 02:13:00 GMT

PrendosJoe wrote:
From our perspective it's pretty basic text functionality & an additional step that really shouldn't be required, especially in a program as intelligent in other ways such as ArchiCAD. It may not take a lot of additional time, but it still does take time & unfortunately time = money in this capitalist world of ours!

Steve wrote:
PrendosJoe wrote:
Thanks folks, looks like we're going to have to continue working with our current workflow. Very frustrating when you get manufacturers standard details etc and have to re-write every note in CAPS!!
Not a problem is it? I keep Microsoft Word open all the time just for that reason.
Copy and Paste.
2018-05-30_6-12-03.png
https://www.screencast.com/t/DUDHkQDdv

In the case you refer to ( manufactures standard details) that can be as easy as just using an All Caps font. Lots of them out there. And you can use the Translator set up to automatically convert all texts imported to the All Caps font. If the manufactures detail is a .pdf you can display the text with an all caps font with the Adobe Acrobat Pro ( or similar version). I would think you would be able to Publish an entire set of Construction Documents as .dwg, then import them using the Translator to automatically change all text to the All Caps font.
However, it's all sort of a work around. It would be great if ArchiCAD had tools for editing System Fonts.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Paul King — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 02:26:22 GMT

A good possibility for those actively trying to use all caps - though less convenient for those needing to go the other way (which is most often in my case, based on the readability research and space advantages of associated with lowercase ).

Definitely agree - extended ArchiCAD functionality required to deal with this

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 16:14:24 GMT

Paul wrote:
A good possibility for those actively trying to use all caps - though less convenient for those needing to go the other way (which is most often in my case, based on the readability research and space advantages of associated with lowercase ).

Definitely agree - extended ArchiCAD functionality required to deal with this

But users are have to meet National CAD Standards with all caps.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:18:59 GMT

Sounds like it's a fairly needed functionality, fingers crossed it arrives at some point!

Cheers all

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Paul King — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 02:07:32 GMT

Steve wrote:
But users are have to meet National CAD Standards with all caps.

Whose national standards? Not all are the same, and some offices prohibit use of all caps, because the research shows all caps is just harder to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps.
Agree the option to toggle caps is important - between 'all caps', 'all lowercase' and 'sentence case'

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 16:22:21 GMT

All caps did not become an industry-standard for Architectural Fonts because of an ease of reading - but because of writing techniques and printing tools which are now for the most part obsolete.
The old Ames Lettering devise, Leroy Lettering tools... There was a time when we needed to get the computer fonts to match the fonts of the sheets in older sets of plans where sheets were being added, copied, pasted together...
Also, ease of reading does not always equate to careful reading. Not only is Architectural Lettering different than casual reading fonts, so are the mechanics of sentence structure for notes. There is sort of an industry vernacular that is used specifically for the purpose of accuracy which is not necessary for easy reading/writing.
So when you see all caps used in a set of Architectural Plans it's not necessarily an arbitrary choice. It is one of several features working together which are intended to constitute a Professional set of Drawings - the subtlety of which is perhaps entirely lost on today's youth I still use an Architectural Hand font with ArchiCAD because is matches my own almost perfectly. It's called SP Hand and was distributed with SoftPlan back in mid 80's. However, for the General Notes sheets I use an easy to read font and of course Sentance Case.
For what ever it is worth, it is interesting to note the SoftPlan 2020 has an All Caps function. It's helpful I suppose to clean up notes and parts of notes that have been copied and pasted in one format or another so they can all be the same. I think using Microsoft Word is convenient enough for me. I always have it open anyway.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Eduardo Rolon — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 17:36:08 GMT

FWIW the triangle example is wrong he will smear ink all over the drawings.
The correct placement is to mirror the triangle since then he will be pushing it over white paper and not dragging it over recent ink. Also he is holding the technical pen wrong it should be as close to perpendicular as possible.
If someone lettered like this at the office he would have been fired.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Steve Jepson — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 02:08:11 GMT

That is for sure. But I don't think the example is a technical pen anyway.

Re: Text - to Caps or not to Caps & general functionality

Paul King — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 02:22:04 GMT

M wrote:
There is a website you can use to convert your text to all caps: https://convertcase.net

The spell check in ARCHICAD will check words in all caps, if you have Microsoft Office set to do so. Open Word, click Options on the very bottom left, and then click on Proofing. Make sure that “Ignore words in UPPERCASE” is unchecked. If this box is checked, the spell check will not proof any words in all caps.

Yes workarounds like that exist, but requires manually cutting and pasting each note, out of potentially thousands of notes