| Commands | CAPCAD_REPORT_PROJECT_INFO (Quick Info) · CAPCAD_REPORT_SELECTION_AREA (Área Seleção) · CAPCAD_PROJECT_HELP (project-management help) |
| Shortcuts | none of the three |
| Ribbon | CAPCAD_REPORT_PROJECT_INFO: CapCad tab › Manage panel › Projeto split button › Quick Info. CAPCAD_REPORT_SELECTION_AREA and CAPCAD_PROJECT_HELP have no button: command line only |
| Category | Manage: Project (CAPCAD_REPORT_PROJECT_INFO and CAPCAD_PROJECT_HELP) · Horizontal: tools (CAPCAD_REPORT_SELECTION_AREA) |
| Forms | None, properly speaking. Quick Info uses the modal text window (with copy and save buttons) when the summary is long, and a message box when it is short |
| Hosts | CAPCAD_PROJECT_HELP: AutoCAD, BricsCAD, GstarCAD, ZWCAD and ARES Commander. CAPCAD_REPORT_PROJECT_INFO and CAPCAD_REPORT_SELECTION_AREA: AutoCAD only (in ARES they announce that they are still to come) |
Three answers in one click, without opening a single settings window. These are the commands you use before starting work on a drawing that is not yours — or before sending yours to somebody else.
- Tells you whether the drawing is really tied to a project. Quick Info answers folder, alignment, coordinate system and style at once: whatever is missing shows as
<undef>, and you fix it before drawing. - Shows the extents of every segment. One line per stretch of the alignment, with the initial and the final station, and access alignments flagged as auxiliary.
- Says which country profile CapCad is running under — and, separately, which language the interface is in. The two change norms and defaults, and they do not always coincide.
- Measures a selection without entering any report. Selection Area separates hatch area, closed-polygon area and line length, and even tells constant-width geometry from the rest.
- Takes the selection already on screen. If you selected before calling the command, it uses what was selected.
- A summary you can copy. When the text goes over 300 characters it opens in a window you can copy from or save to
.txt.
Quick Info — the project at a glance
CAPCAD_REPORT_PROJECT_INFO asks nothing and draws nothing: it builds a text with the current state of the project and shows it.
Outside the Brazilian profile the summary has this shape:
Project (folder): D:\Works\A-11\Section 3
Current alignment: main_alignment
Extensions: 1: 0 to 12480
2: 0 to 1830 (aux)
Coordinate system: ETRS89 / UTM 30N
Style: capcad.default
Culture: United Kingdom
Interface language: English
| Line | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Project (folder) | This drawing's project folder. <undef> when the drawing points at none |
| Current alignment | The name of the active alignment file, without the .capcad extension |
| Extensions | One line per segment: <n>: <initial length> to <final length>, in metres rounded down. A segment of access type gets (aux) at the end |
| Coordinate system | The system resolved by the project's priority chain |
| Style | The style in use |
| Culture | The name of the active country profile |
| Interface language | The language CapCad's texts are coming out in |
How the summary is shown: above 300 characters, in a modal text window with Copy and Save buttons; below that, in a plain message box. In practice a configured project almost always lands in the window — it is the text you paste into an email to ask why somebody's alignment will not open.
The Brazilian profile prints the same information with Portuguese labels and adds two extra criteria lines, described on the Portuguese edition of this page.
Selection Area — measuring what is selected
CAPCAD_REPORT_SELECTION_AREA walks a selection and gives back ten values. It accepts the previous selection: if entities are already selected when you call the command, those are the ones that count; otherwise it asks for the selection.
The result is printed on the command line and shown in a box, with these keys:
| Key | What it adds up |
|---|---|
AreaHatch |
The area of every hatch in the selection |
ExtClosedGeometryWithWidth |
Length of the closed geometries with constant width |
ExtClosedGeometryNoWidth |
Length of the closed geometries with no width |
ExtOpenGeometryWithWidth |
Length of the open geometries with constant width |
ExtOpenGeometryNoWidth |
Length of the open geometries with no width |
AreaClosedGeometryWithWidth |
Area of the closed ones with constant width |
AreaClosedGeometryNoWidth |
Area of the closed ones without constant width |
--- |
Separator |
AreaTotal |
Hatches plus the two closed-geometry areas |
ExtTotal |
The sum of the four lengths — without the hatches |
The three rules that explain almost every difference between what you expected and what came out:
- A hatch counts only as area. The length of its boundary is never measured.
- Only closed polylines and circles count as area. A closed spline or ellipse adds to the length, but its area is left out — the area used is the one the CAD itself reports for the entity, not a recomputed one.
AreaTotalincludes the hatches;ExtTotaldoes not. Adding the two area lines to the hatch line gives the total twice.
The split by constant width exists for road markings: a strip drawn as a polyline with width is measured in linear metres and in square metres at the same time, and the two figures sit on different lines.
The values come out with up to four decimals and a decimal point.
For a project quantity take-off — by layer, by item, exportable — the route is the reports subsystem; Selection Area is the raw measurement of any selection, with no classification.
Project-management help
CAPCAD_PROJECT_HELP opens the learning page about project management (capcad.io/learn/manage) in the browser. It is the only one of the three that exists in every CAD, and it has no ribbon button: it is a link destination, meant to be called from inside another flow.
Notes
Styleblank is not the same as<undef>. Folder, alignment and coordinate system fall back to<undef>when they are missing; the style simply comes out empty.- The extents are the alignment's accumulated lengths, rounded down — not the formatted station. To read stations in the project's format, use the Station Navigator.
CultureandInterface languageare different things. The country profile decides norms, libraries and defaults; the language decides only the texts. A Bolivian profile with a Spanish interface showsCulture: BoliviaandInterface language: Spanish.- The Selection Area key names come out in English in every interface language.
- The constant width is the polyline's, not the lineweight nor the per-vertex width: a polyline whose width varies from vertex to vertex falls into the "no width" buckets.
See also
- Alignment Manager — the window where you set what Quick Info only reports.
- Station Navigator — reading a station in the project's own format.
- Alignment properties — the per-station data the alignment carries.