Layout Navigator - CapCad Manual - CapCad: CAD Tools for road traffic sign design


Command	`CAPCAD_LAYOUT_NAVIGATOR`
Shortcut	none
Ribbon	no button of its own on the English CapCad tab; it is opened by the Palette button on the Tools tab of the Sheet Set
Category	none
Interface	a CAD palette, "CapCad – Layout Panel", with three tabs: Navigator, Sheets and Utils. 240 × 480 pixels, dockable left or right
Hosts	AutoCAD
Also opened by	the Sheet Set's Palette button

The list of layouts the CAD's tab bar cannot show you. In a drawing with sixty sheets the tab bar gives up; this palette shows them all, in a column, and lets you reorganise them.

It stays open beside the drawing. Dockable, with auto-hide, always in sync: creating, deleting or renaming a layout by any route updates the list immediately.
One click navigates. No hunting for a tab, no scrolling a bar.
It groups by prefix. Names like SIGNING-0007 become a tree with the group above and the number below — which is exactly how the Sheet Set names its sheets.
Reorder by dragging. The CAD's tab order follows what you drop in the list.
Bulk renaming. Replace, add or strip the prefix on every layout at once, with a confirmation and a count.
Multiple selection for deleting. Pick several, press Delete, confirm once.

What it does

CAPCAD_LAYOUT_NAVIGATOR opens (or closes) a palette with three tabs, all about the same thing: the layouts of the active drawing.

Navigator — the plain list, in tab order, with the current layout highlighted. This is where you navigate, rename, duplicate, reorder and delete.
Sheets — the same list as a tree, grouped by the text before the first hyphen in the name.
Utils — the bulk operations: sorting, prefixes and the wholesale delete.

The palette subscribes to the CAD's events: any layout created, deleted, renamed or copied — by it or by another command — rebuilds the list, and so does switching drawings.

Running the command again toggles the palette's visibility; it is created once per session.

No screenshot on this page. The palette is a native CAD panel, not an ordinary form.

Workflow

Run CAPCAD_LAYOUT_NAVIGATOR (or click Palette on the Sheet Set's Tools tab). The palette opens and can be docked to the side.
On the Navigator tab, click a name to go to that layout.
Double-click renames in place. Right-click opens the menu with Navigate to Layout, Rename, Duplicate and Delete.
Drag a name to another position to change the tab order.
To work on many layouts at once, go to Utils.

The Navigator tab

A single-column list of all the layouts, Model included, in the CAD's tab order. The current layout comes in selected and scrolled into view. The footer shows the count, not counting Model. The ↺ button at the top reloads the list by hand (tooltip Refresh).

Action	How	What it does
Navigate	one click (with a single item selected), or Navigate to Layout in the context menu	Makes that layout current.
Rename	double click, or Rename	Edits the name in place. An empty name, or the same name as before, cancels; a name the CAD refuses leaves the old one and shows why.
Duplicate	Duplicate in the menu	Copies the layout with the suffix `-Copy`; if that exists already, `-Copy2`, `-Copy3`, and so on.
Delete	the Delete key, or Delete in the menu	Deletes the selected ones, with a single confirmation for all of them.
Reorder	drag and drop	Rewrites the tab order, and forces the CAD's tab bar to redraw.

The Model layout is protected: it cannot be renamed, duplicated, deleted or dragged, and dropping another layout onto the first position does nothing. Rename, duplicate and navigate need one item selected; delete accepts several.

The Sheets tab

The same list as a tree, without Model. A layout whose name has a hyphen after the first character is split: the text before the hyphen becomes the group and the text after it becomes the leaf inside it. SIGNING-0007 shows as 0007 inside SIGNING; layouts with no hyphen sit at the root. This reads directly the Sheet Set's sheet ID in the layout name mode, which names its sheets that way.

The buttons at the top are ▼ (Expand All), ▶ (Collapse All) and ↺ (Refresh). The footer shows how many layouts and how many groups.

Clicking a leaf navigates to it; clicking a group node does nothing. Double-clicking a leaf renames it — and the edit only changes the part after the hyphen: the group is reassembled into the new name, so renaming 0007 to 0008 inside SIGNING produces SIGNING-0008.

The Utils tab

Every operation on this tab skips Model and asks for confirmation with a count before acting.

Order

Button	What it does
Sort Alphabetically	Reorders the tabs by full name.
Sort by Prefix	Reorders first by the text before the hyphen, then by the text after it — the natural order of a grouped sheet set.
Reverse Order	Reverses the current tab order.

In all three, Model returns to the first position and the rest take the positions after it.

Prefix

Control	What it does
two unlabelled boxes → →	Replaces the prefix: every layout whose text before the first hyphen matches the left box takes the value in the right one. Leaving the right box empty removes the prefix and leaves only the suffix. An empty search box is refused with a warning; so is finding no layout. The button's tooltip is Replace prefix.
unlabelled box → +	Adds `<prefix>-` in front of the name of every layout, whether it had a prefix or not. An empty box is refused with a warning. Tooltip: Add prefix to all layouts.
Remove All Prefixes	On every layout that has a hyphen, strips the prefix and the hyphen, leaving the suffix.

Danger Zone

Button	What it does
Delete All Layouts	Deletes every layout in the drawing except Model. Confirms once, with the warning "Delete ALL layouts? This cannot be undone."

Remembered between sessions

Nothing. The palette reads the drawing every time it opens; its size and position are kept by the CAD itself, as for any palette.

Notes

The palette belongs to the session, not to the drawing. It is created on the first run of the command and reused afterwards; switching drawings only rebuilds the lists.
Bulk renames are done one at a time. If the CAD refuses a name mid-operation, the command shows the reason for that one and carries on with the rest — the result can end up partial.
There is no undo on the bulk operations. All three deletions (Delete in the list, Delete in the menu and Delete All Layouts) really remove the layout.
Sorting by prefix only recognises the first hyphen. SIGN-A-101-0007 is read as group SIGN and leaf A-101-0007.
The two prefix boxes have no captions or placeholder text. The left one is the prefix to find, the right one its replacement; only the → button's tooltip says what the row does.
To delete or reorder layouts from the command line, see CAPCAD_LAYOUT_DELETE and CAPCAD_LAYOUT_REORDER in Layouts and viewports. To generate the sheets this palette organises, see Sheet Set.