Toggle between draw line and draw arc.

[Anonymous]

I am copying an AutoCad drawing into Archicad. I Xrefed in the Pella Window file and now I am tracing all of it. Drudgery to the Max! I need a toggle between draw a line and draw an arc so I don't have to move the cursor to switch between the two. I lose my place because I have to look between screens and move the cursor between screens in order to switch. It would be immensely faster to shift L and shift A to accomplish this.

Is there a keyboard toggle of that sort, what is it and where is it?

Roger

[Eduardo Rolon]

In Work Environment look for shortcuts, organize them by alphabetical order and assign a shortcut to line and another to arc.
On another note, Why don't you explode the Autocad file to get the drawing without tracing it?

[Anonymous]

Great idea! What would be the procedure to follow to accomplish that? At this point, the AutoCad drawing won't let me do anything to it, even with the layer unlocked. At this point I really like the explode idea. Where is that tool located?
As it is, I tried using the polyline tool and the pet pallet and it speeded me up a lot.
Roger

[Erika Epstein]

You might also try the unifying and consolidation commands under
EDIT>RESHAPE

[Eduardo Rolon]

Explode is also located in the Edit Menu under Reshape.

[Dwight]

And don't forget Option-clicking an edge to switch to that tool.

[Anonymous]

i import alot of CAD stuff and just explod it and its done.. no need to trace it out..

as for the line and arc, iv set up L for line as i use it so much and hated havign to find the buton every time.. u could easy to the same for the arc tool..

[Anonymous]

OK. Several problems I have in an attempt to follow your advice. Thanks for answering, by the way.

I tried the work environment- keyboard shortcut dialog box and after I figured out I had to highlight a command I was able to assign L to line and A to arc. Thanks!

I brought in the drawing as an attachment. I went to Edit- Reshape and the only active icons are Trim and Split. I highlighted the drawing and tried the split command and nothing worked. Nothing will move when I try to drag it, either.

The boss told me to bring it in as an attachment and to trace it so she can grab the components and drop them into window details in the main file. Then we delete the attachment to clean up the drawing.

Thankd for your suggestions.

[Anonymous]

you need to bring it in via file>external content>place external drawing

then select the drawing and go edit>reshape>explode into current view.

then when the dialod pops up i select "keep drawing primatives only"

NOTE: BEFORE! bringing the drawing in make sure u have all the layers from the cad file set correctly... cos if u import a DWG with 1000's of layers then explode it your gonna end up wwith all them layers in your layer list..

i usually set all the layers to one layer in cad then import it.. dpenends what u do u might want more then one so u can filter them

[Djordje]

Bring it in as an object, then explode. That will place all of it on one - ArchiCAD - layer.

Alternatively, when you bring it in using Open, it is a group. Open it in ArchiCAD first, select all, Edit selection set - place everything on one layer dedicated, delete all the other layers, check duplicates, do the Consolidation, save as PLN and merge to your ArchiCAD file.

Take good care that the layers and other parameters of a DWG are handled in different ways when you XRef, when you Place as External Drawing, and when you Merge or Open. The explanation in detail was done by Thomas Holm, and you can find it in Tips&Tricks I seem to remember?