Select signs and supports

What it does

In CapCad a sign placed in the drawing is a set of entities: the sign block, the support block it seats on, and in some arrangements a leader line joining the two. Attributes decide which is which: a block is a sign when it carries SIGN_CODE (or SENAL_COD, CODIGOPLACA, PLACA_COD, CODIGO) and a support when it carries POST_CODE or SUP_COD. The link between them is geometric: the support block has a seating point (the dynamic parameter "Position2 X/Y", turned by the block's rotation) and a sign belongs to it when its insertion point coincides with that seating point to within 1 drawing unit.

Hence the question these commands answer: the sign, the support, or both? The answer changes what the next operation does to the drawing.

The three selection commands draw nothing and change no entity: they only replace the active selection with the cut you asked for. The fourth, CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_RESCALE, uses the same pairing but to scale the assembly.

Workflow

1. Run the command (or click Select (12) on the Tools tab of the Vertical Tools form, with the cut chosen in radio buttons 3, 9 or 11).
2. Select in the drawing. A wide, careless window is fine: anything that does not qualify is discarded. A selection made before the command is also accepted.
3. The command hands back the cut as the active selection and writes on the command line how many items survived (N item(s) selected.) or that nothing matched (Nothing matched.).
4. Run the next operation — MOVE, ERASE, a layer change, a sign action — on what is left selected.

The commands

CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT — signs only

Out of your selection, every block that is a sign survives. Blocks with no attributes, lines, text, supports and everything else are discarded. Blocks named INFO and DEF_TERMINAL_IMP are never treated as signs.

A block whose name matches a fixed list of short codes — a letter, a hyphen and a number, at most 5 characters once the style suffix has been stripped — is taken into the selection even when it carries no sign attributes. On another country profile only the attributes decide.

CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_POST — supports only

Every block carrying POST_CODE or SUP_COD survives. Use it before changing the supports' layer, erasing them in bulk, or feeding them to the support-height calculation.

CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_ALL — the sign with its support

For every sign in the selection the command looks through model space for the support whose seating point coincides with the sign's insertion point, and returns both. A sign with no support is returned on its own; a support that was in the selection but whose sign was not is not returned — the starting point is always the sign.

This is the cut to use to move a sign without breaking the seating, or to erase a whole assembly.

CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_RESCALE — rescale signs already inserted

This is the command behind the Adjust scale... button (1) on the Tools tab. It brings signs that are already in the drawing to the scale set in the project — typically when an urban stretch (1:500) and a rural stretch (1:1000) meet in the same drawing, or when the scale was changed after insertion.

The target scale is the Placas.Escala preference, the same one behind the Scale 1: box of Insert Vertical; with nothing stored, 1000.

What happens:

1. A dialog appears before the selection: "Signs that are not in the defined scale of 1:N will be changed to this scale. Change the scale in the Insert Vertical command, scale field. Select both the plate and its support. Entities that are not of these types will be ignored."
2. You select in the drawing. Only the signs in the selection are considered.
3. For each sign the support is found through the pairing ladder (seating point → the block geometry's fence → hop along a leader line → a wider fence → assembly). With no support, the sign is skipped.
4. The assembly's current scale is read from the X scale factor of the support block, divided by 10, which is how CapCad stores "1:N". If it already equals the target exactly, the command line answers that it was already at the correct scale and nothing moves.
5. Otherwise the sign and the support — plus the leader line and the second sign, when the support was reached through an assembly — are scaled by target scale ÷ current scale, about the support's insertion point. The command line logs the conversion.

Going from 1:500 to 1:1000 doubles the signs; from 1:1000 to 1:500 halves them. The support point does not move, so the sign's plan position stays where it was.

The form

The four commands live on the Tools tab of the Vertical Tools form, opened by CAPCAD_SIGNS_FIX (shortcut CV) or, straight onto that tab, by CAPCAD_SIGN_TOOLS (ribbon › Vertical Signing › Vertical Tools).

The "Tools" tab: the Scale and Selection frames. The controls below them belong to the attribute fixes and are covered on the Vertical Tools page.

Scale

Check the target scale in the Insert Vertical command: the bold label between the two, "Current scale: 1:1000", is fixed text.

Selection

The three radio buttons choose which command the Select button will run.

How the options combine

There are no figures on this page: the three cuts only exist against the entities of a drawing — which blocks carry which attributes and where the seating points are — and there is no way to reproduce them outside the CAD.

The scale conversion, though, is a simple ratio. The table below shows the factor applied to the assembly for a target scale of 1:1000, the default preference:

Remembered between sessions

Nothing is written to the preferences. The chosen cut (3, 9 or 11) and the Keep sign insertion point position box (2) stay as you left them for as long as the Vertical Tools form is alive in the CAD session; close the CAD and they return to the defaults — Signs with supports and auxiliary lines on, Keep position off.

The rescale target is not an option of this form: it is the Placas.Escala preference, written by Insert Vertical and kept between sessions.

Notes

• The leader line and the assembly's second sign are not included. In this version CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_ALL returns the sign and its support. For assemblies, finish the selection by hand.
• The command-line replies are English in every language. N item(s) selected. and Nothing matched. appear like that everywhere. The rescale command's own conversion line is the other way round: it is written in Portuguese in every language.
• The rescale compares the scale exactly. A support inserted at 1:999.99 is not treated as 1:1000 and is converted.
• A mirrored support flips the assembly. When the support is reached through an assembly and its X scale factor is negative (a mirrored block), the applied ratio is negative too and the assembly is mirrored along with the resize. In the ordinary case of a sign seated directly on its support the sign is discarded and only the size changes.
• "Select from support", the wide button just below the Selection frame, is not available in this version; the command line says so. To start from the support, use CAPCAD_SIGN_SELECT_POST and then CAPCAD_SIGN_MANAGE, which knows how to go from a sign to its paired support.
• Prepare the selection first if you prefer. All four commands accept a selection already made in the drawing; when one exists, the CAD offers it to the command instead of asking again.