special menu help

[Jefferson]

Having trouble locating anything in the help menu [operating under the assumption that this is a duplicate of the manual] that describes functions and or uses of the tools/functions unknown to me. [I'd like to have a better idea about these before I just start turning things on and off. I regularly toggle show special lines, have enable special features checked, and render without autosave. ]

Can someone point me in the right direction please.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Jeff,

Someone posted this link a while back:

http://www.arkiklub.com/showcategory.asp?CategoryID=95

refers to 6.5, but I'm not sure if many new things have been added since then?

HTH,
Karl

[Jefferson]

Hi Karl ,

Your recall ability is amazing! I have spent a few moments with the special menu [current] and the site list side by side. There appear to be some changes but this is a great start. There are so many functions there it would be great to have some guidelines. Perhaps someone from Graphisoft has something to add here..........

[Anonymous]

Please...

Remember that the special menu is a developer toy that most companies would not even let us use. There is a bunch of junk in there that we don't even want. Let us accept that we get access to a few half implemented features for those of us intrepid/foolhardy enough to use/need/want them and not complain about lack of documentation. Graphiisoft needs to focus on the real development of official features for the next version. We can can handle the impromptu documentation of the special menu ourselves.

[Dwight]

Does anyone know how to summon the SpecialMenu in 9?
Or if at all?
Seems you have to have some extra special Voodoo to do it.

[Dwight]

And can't even find it with ResEdit.

[__archiben]

Dwight wrote:
Does anyone know how to summon the SpecialMenu in 9?
Or if at all?
Seems you have to have some extra special Voodoo to do it.

yep. the art-of-the-plist-editor.

you can do it three ways . . . all involve modifying the file:
~/Library/Preferences/com.graphisoft.archicad9.plist

(or something like that. somebody with a mac please confirm or correct my path name - i'm running on my limited memory chip at the moment with no mac at hand to help)

1. if you know what you're doing with the terminal you can "write defaults" or something. i don't, so:

2. open the file with a text editor and find the lines of text that tell it to turn the special menu on. alter the 'no' to a 'yes' (or perhaps a '0' to a '1'). can say i've ever done it like that myself, so by far the easiest way is:

3. use the developer tool 'Plist Editor' which is installed as a part of the developer tools package. everybody has a developer tools installer file installed as a part of the default mac OSX install. you can find it in ./Applications/Installers/

once you've installed the developer tools, the Plist Editor can be found in ./Developer/Applications/

ONCE AGAIN TAKE NOTE:

Matthew wrote:
Remember that the special menu is a developer toy that most companies would not even let us use. There is a bunch of junk in there that we don't even want.

...if it goes wrong it's your own fault!

~/archiben

[Jefferson]

Well it's all good then. I'll be happy that I get what I get.

Matthew, this was not a complaint! It was just curiosity [given the great uses of the features I already use and those that have migrated to the edit palette from the previous version] driven by a healthy and appropriate dose of caution that prompted the search for "instructions".

[Ben Odonnell]

~/archiben wrote:

Dwight wrote:
Does anyone know how to summon the SpecialMenu in 9?
Or if at all?
Seems you have to have some extra special Voodoo to do it.

yep. the art-of-the-plist-editor.

you can do it three ways . . . all involve modifying the file:
~/Library/Preferences/com.graphisoft.archicad9.plist

(or something like that. somebody with a mac please confirm or correct my path name - i'm running on my limited memory chip at the moment with no mac at hand to help)

1. if you know what you're doing with the terminal you can "write defaults" or something. i don't, so:

2. open the file with a text editor and find the lines of text that tell it to turn the special menu on. alter the 'no' to a 'yes' (or perhaps a '0' to a '1'). can say i've ever done it like that myself, so by far the easiest way is:

3. use the developer tool 'Plist Editor' which is installed as a part of the developer tools package. everybody has a developer tools installer file installed as a part of the default mac OSX install. you can find it in ./Applications/Installers/

once you've installed the developer tools, the Plist Editor can be found in ./Developer/Applications/

ONCE AGAIN TAKE NOTE:

Matthew wrote:
Remember that the special menu is a developer toy that most companies would not even let us use. There is a bunch of junk in there that we don't even want.

...if it goes wrong it's your own fault!

~/archiben

There is one more way you can do it without any editing, if you simply hold down APPLE+CTRL while starting up ArchiCAD, it will appear.

I hope it is those 2 keys, it's ALT+CTRL on the PC, so that's why I'm assuming it is APPLE+CTRL on the MAC.

Just to reflect Matthew and ben's sentiments USE IT WITH CAUTION!


HTH.
Cheers.
Ben

[Dwight]

Thanks for the idea - but things have changed with 9 and it doesn't work like that any more.
So it looks like your hack is the only trick left.

Can anyone make this work with key combos?