Sign actions (insert, keep, remove, relocate)

What it does

Besides its code, every sign placed by CapCad carries the action the project has taken on it: the sign is to be inserted (it is new), kept (it exists and stays), removed (it exists and goes) or relocated (it exists and moves). The action is not a loose annotation: it is what decides

• the layer the sign and its support sit on (ROAD_SIGN_NEW, ROAD_SIGN_KEEP, ROAD_SIGN_REMOVE, ROAD_SIGN_RELOCATE);
• the sign's graphic representation (in colour, grey, grey with an X);
• the attributes the block stores and the reports read;
• and therefore which column of the take-off the sign lands in.

The four commands on this page change the action of signs already in the drawing. The action at insertion time is chosen in Insert Vertical; here you correct, promote or demote what is already drawn.

Each command asks for a selection and treats every entity according to what it is: a sign is restyled and moved to another layer, a support gets the support treatment, and a line or polyline on a vertical-signing layer only changes layer. With the item options on, road markings, guardrails and entities on CAPCAD_ITEM layers follow the action too.

CAPCAD_ACTION_PANEL only opens the Vertical Tools form on its Actions tab, where the same commands sit on buttons, next to the sign replace and swap tools.

Workflow

1. Select the signs, supports and other elements whose action is to change. An existing selection is used: you do not have to run the command first.
2. Type the action's shortcut: IMP, MAN or REM (or the synonyms COL, EXI, RET). If nothing is selected yet, the command asks for a selection; confirm with Enter.
3. The command walks the selection. Signs are restyled and moved to another layer, supports get the support treatment, and lines and polylines on vertical-signing layers only change layer.
4. The command line reports how many entities changed and, when the item options are on, how many road-marking layers and guardrails were relabelled.

From the form the path is the same: CAPCAD_ACTION_PANEL, one click on Insert (1), Keep (2) or Remove (3), and the selection in the drawing.

An entity that cannot be treated does not stop the pass: the command says so on the command line and moves on.

The four actions

Insert — CAPCAD_ACTION_IMPLANT (IMP, COL)

The sign becomes a new installation. It is the only action that gives the sign back its original block: if it was drawn grey (…-GrayShaded) or grey with an X (…-XShapedGray), the command reinserts the plain block at the same position, rotation and scale, with the attribute values preserved.

What changes on the sign:

If the sign is already an insertion (its composite code ends in I), the command says Já é IMP and leaves it alone.

Two block families — one warning-marker family and the alignment markers — have their .1 inversion suffix stripped from the block name and the inversion reapplied as a dynamic state, so the drawing does not flip.

Keep — CAPCAD_ACTION_MAINTAIN (MAN, EXI)

The sign becomes an existing sign that stays where it is. The command creates (once per code) a copy of the block definition carrying the style suffix — -GrayShaded by default — converts every element of that copy to grey by luminance, and reinserts the sign with that definition at the same position, rotation and scale.

Hence the usual shorthand: grey on a yellow layer. The grey is the representation; the yellow is the layer.

Remove — CAPCAD_ACTION_REMOVE (REM, RET)

The sign becomes a sign to be taken out. The mechanism is the same as Keep, with whatever style the project defines for REMOVE — by default XShapedGray, which greys the sign and draws an X from corner to corner of the block's extent.

Relocate — CAPCAD_ACTION_RELOCATE (RMJ)

Marks the sign as relocated — an existing sign that leaves one point and comes back at another. The layer meant for this action is ROAD_SIGN_RELOCATE (ACI 181); there is also ROAD_SIGN_RELOCATED (ACI 30) to tell the sign that is leaving from the one that has already arrived.

CAPCAD_ACTION_RELOCATE is not available in this version. To mark a relocation, set it at insertion time in Insert Vertical, or use the vertical-signing fix command.

Replace and swap

Two neighbouring operations, on buttons 12 to 14 of the panel, with commands of their own — see Swap and replace signs:

• Replace individual (CAPCAD_SIGN_SUBSTITUTE): asks for a new code (or Enter for the same sign), asks for the sign, and reinserts.
• Replace multiple (with the same) (CAPCAD_SIGN_SUBSTITUTE_MULTI): the same over a selection, always with the same sign, without asking for a code.
• Swap (CAPCAD_SIGN_SWAP): swaps the selected sign for another, by code.

What gets written on the sign

The action does not use XData: it lives in the layer and in the block's attributes. The tag names follow the product culture — SIGN_ in an English profile, SENAL_ in Spanish, PLACA_ in Portuguese.

The vertical-signing reports classify each sign by its layer; only under one country-specific paradigm do they read the action attribute first and use the layer as a fallback. So on most projects the right layer matters more than the right attribute.

The action layers

The names below are the ones an English profile writes. The active style may add a prefix (the sample style uses CAPCAD_, giving CAPCAD_ROAD_SIGN_NEW), rename the layer and change the colour; other cultures use another stem (SINA_VERT_ in Portuguese, SENA_VERT_ in Spanish). Layers that do not exist are created on the spot.

Supports

A support selected along with the signs gets a treatment of its own:

• Fill. On insert, the support's Visibility1 dynamic state gains the (Preenchido) suffix if it does not already have it — that is the filled, to-be-installed support. The support is neither reinserted nor swapped for another block.
• Action attribute. When the project has the action on the support option on, the SUP_ACAO attribute receives NEW, KEEP or REMOVE in the product's culture.
• Code, in urban mode. The SUP_COD attribute is rewritten to match the action: RET <code> to remove, <code> EX to keep, COL <code> to place, SUBST <code> to replace. Support codes known to be existing structures — PIL, OAE, SPU and CS — are left alone.

In this version Keep and Remove apply to a selected support the same restyling as to signs, creating a <support>-GrayShaded or -XShapedGray definition. If you only want the support's layer to change, leave it out of the selection for those two actions.

Urban mode

Urban mode is switched on by the project style (a handful of style paradigms are treated as urban), chosen in the Project Manager. What changes in the actions:

• Insert writes COL (place) in the short action attribute instead of IMP. The same applies to some country-specific styles.
• The support code is rewritten with the COL, RET and SUBST prefixes and the EX suffix, as above.
• The replace action (SUB / SUBST) becomes acceptable on signs and supports, taking the sign to the ROAD_SIGN_REPLACE layer.

The panel's button captions do not change: they stay Insert, Keep and Remove. What changes is the values written and the alternative keyboard shortcuts (COL, EXI, RET), shown in blue under each button.

Beyond signs

With the item options on (see the Item action options frame of the panel), the same pass treats three more families of entity:

• Road markings. Entities on road-marking layers have their action suffix rewritten: _REM to remove and _MAN to keep. Insert and relocate strip the suffix, giving the marking back its base layer. This sweep runs before the sign sweep, because the sign pass erases and re-creates entities.
• CapCad items. Entities on CAPCAD_ITEM* layers go to CAPCAD_ITEM_IMP, _MAN, _REM or _RMJ. In this version that treatment follows the Horizontal option, not the Layer CAPCAD_ITEM option.
• Guardrails. Guardrails in the selection are moved to the three layer families of the new action — body, entry terminal and exit terminal — resolved from the layer catalogue (DEFENSA_IMP, DEFENSA_MAN, DEFENSA_REM, DEFENSA_SUB; these are not renamed per culture). The relocate action has no guardrail family and moves nothing.

The reach comes from the user settings, not from the command line, and applies equally to all four action commands. With those options unset, the commands treat only signs, supports and lines on vertical-signing layers.

The form

CAPCAD_ACTION_PANEL opens the Vertical Tools form on its Actions tab. The other tabs — Fix, options, Tools and Utils — belong to the Vertical Tools fix command and are documented with it.

The "Actions" tab of the Vertical Tools form. Each action's keyboard shortcuts appear in blue under its button.

Actions

The selection is asked for just after the click. There is no relocate button on this tab.

Custom action

A custom action takes the sign to the layer ROAD_SIGN_<ACTION> — ROAD_SIGN_DAMAGED, ROAD_SIGN_PRIORITY and so on, from the custom-action list the profile offers in Insert Vertical — which lets those signs be separated in selections, layer filters and reports.

Item action options

These set how far the actions reach beyond the signs: which other entity families follow the change. The four action commands read that reach from the user settings, not from the form — including when they are fired from the keyboard with the form closed.

In this version the four boxes in this frame are indicative only: the effective reach is whatever is stored in the user settings.

Replace sign

Remembered between sessions

The reach of the actions (Horizontal, Guardrail, Layer CAPCAD_ITEM) lives in the user settings and is read by every action command on every run — including by the keyboard shortcuts, with no form open. Nothing else on this tab is remembered: the custom-action box and All entities mode come back empty every time the form is opened.

The form itself is one per session: reopening it through CAPCAD_SIGNS_FIX, CAPCAD_SIGN_TOOLS or CAPCAD_ACTION_PANEL brings back the same window, only on another tab, with whatever you had filled in on the others.

Notes

• The sign is erased and reinserted. Every action that changes the representation (insert, keep, remove) erases the block reference and creates another. Position, rotation, scale and attribute values are transferred; XData and CapCad group ids are not. If the sign belonged to a named selection, rebuild that selection afterwards.
• The long-form action attribute is Portuguese in every language. Insert writes it as IMPLANTAR — or as the situation label Sit: Implantar when the style turns the situation labels on — whatever the profile, while the short action attribute reads your own language. The reports classify by layer, so the take-off is unaffected.
• The styled definition is created once. The <code>-GrayShaded (or -XShapedGray) block is built for the first sign of that code to go through the action, and reused by the ones after it. Blocks nested inside the definition are exploded so the colour conversion reaches every element.
• The representation comes from the style, not from the command. The project style says which representation each action uses, in its sign action-styles property. When the style says Normal for an action, the sign is not restyled. The factory values are: insert Normal, keep GrayShaded, remove GrayShaded — the sample style shipped with CapCad sets remove to XShapedGray, the grey with an X.
• Some representations are not available in this version: OuterShape, GrayShadedOuter, Ticks, DeleteHatch and the CodeInBody variants. A style that asks for one of them leaves the sign unchanged.
• Work-zone colours. The OBRA (ACI 30, orange) and LIMA (ACI 60) representations recolour the whole sign instead of greying it; they are used in the sign colour variants, not in the actions.
• Missing layers are created, with the name, colour and description from the active style's layer catalogue. Never type a layer name by hand: change the action and the layer follows.
• The window title and the command line's count messages are English in every language, and a few replies — "Já é IMP" among them — are Portuguese in every language.