AccuDraw

This first thing many of you will want to know it how to turn Accudraw off. It can occasionally get in the way. The simplest way to toggle AccuDraw on and off is to find the compass on the Primary Tools toolbox. This button acts as a toggle, so left click (data point) on it to turn it off or on.

Compass The most recognizable feature of AccuDraw is the Compass. It is a square or circular, kind of blue or purple, shaded shape with ticks.

The compass is made up of three basic parts:

Origin – This is the center of the compass and it is always location 0,0. Don’t confuse this with “coordinate xy=0,0”, they are not the same thing. The origin is the focal point for all AccuDraw operations. Every action you perform with AccuDraw operates from the orign.

Drawing Plane Indicator – The primary purpose of the drawing plane indicator is to show the current orientation of AccuDraw’s drawing plane. It also displays the type of coordinate system in effect for AccuDraw. When the frame appears as a rectangle, the rectangular coordinate system ( X, Y) is in effect. When the frame appears as a circle, the polar coordinate system (Distance and Angle) is active.

Axis ticks – The two axis ticks are oriented at right angles to one another. They represent the drawing plane X and Y axes. Typically X is red and Y is green.

Dialog Box

The AccuDraw dialog box can vary in appearance depending on if you are currently in a 2D or 3D file, and if you are using rectangular or polar mode. It can also be docked to the top or bottom of your application window to save space. Input focus It is important to remember that no AccuDraw shortcut key‐in works unless the focus is in the AccuDraw window. If you haven’t changed the assignments, the F11 key will send the focus to the AccuDraw dialog.

Input focus tips Regardless of where the focus is, you can move it to the Key‐in window with F9 Regardless of where the focus is, move it to the tool settings by pressing F10 Regardless of where the focus is, move it to AccuDraw by pressing the F11

Mouse Buttons I want to take a brief moment to talk about the mouse buttons. There are terms for the mouse buttons in MicroStation. I have this picture that I stole from the envision cad website that shows the default mouse button assignments.

So, when I say, left‐click or data point – I mean press down and release the left mouse button. right‐click or reset – I mean press down and release the right mouse button. tentative or chord – I mean press down and release both left and right mouse buttons at the same time.

Demo Now if you were to start drawing a line, you might select the Place SmartLine tool, data point (left click) somewhere in the view and start moving the mouse around.

You will notice a couple of things. As you approach one of the axes, you snap to it and lock there briefly. This is called indexing. This allows you to draw nice straight lines in either the X or Y direction quite easily. Another thing that you should notice is the fields in the AccuDraw window change as you move around. These numbers are measurements along the X and Y axis from the origin. If you move your mouse to the left or below the origin, you will see negative values appear in the fields. You may also notice that the blinking cursor bounces back and forth between the X and Y fields. This is due to the Smart Key‐In feature. The Smart Key‐in feature evaluates the proximity of your pointer to one of the axes on the compass, it then selects the nearest axis. If you drag in the X direction (or at least mostly in the X direction), the focus jumps to the X field. If you drag in the Y direction, the focus jumps to the Y field.

Okay, now you know that AccuDraw is always watching your mouse. It looks for the position of the mouse relative to the origin and dynamically changes to accommodate wherever you move the mouse (as long as you stay within a view window).

AccuDraw is also waiting for keyboard instructions known as shortcuts. There are many keyboard shortcuts built in to AccuDraw all designed to make your drafting experience easier and faster. To see the list of shortcuts all you have to do is key in a question mark ([Shift] + [/] = ? or Shift plus the forward ). This key combination will bring up an AccuDraw Shortcuts dialog box. This dialog box shows you a list of all the available accudraw shortcut key‐ins.

Some Basic Key‐Ins If you click on the Space bar, you will see the compass change shape. This indicates that AccuDraw is changing from rectangular to polar mode. Polar mode is really handy if you want to enter distance and angle directions.

The is another AccuDraw shortcut. It will lock you onto the nearest axis. Pressing it again will unlock you.

X will lock the X axis to whatever distance you are currently from the origin. Clicking X again will unlock that distance. Y works in the same way, but in the Y direction.

D locks the distance and similarly A locks the angle.

Keying In Values The next step in efficient use of AccuDraw is to learn how to properly key in values. Here is an example: Say you want to draw a line 10 units long along the X axis. Select Place SmartLine, data point somewhere on your screen and drag the mouse in the X direction allowing indexing to snap your line to the X axis. On your keyboard, type “10”, then data point again to secure the location. Notice I did not tell you to clear the X field, or click in the X field. (You could also have locked the line down to the X axis if you wanted to. This would have allowed you a bit more freedom of movement with your mouse.)

Now let’s say we want to draw a line 10 units in the X direction and 14.9 in the Y direction. Select your drawing tool, in this case Place SmartLine. Data point in the view. Move your mouse in the X direction and type 10, don’t data point, move your mouse in the Y direction, type 14.9, now data point to set the location. You can also use the down arrow or the to move from one field to another. Did you notice the X and Y buttons in the AccuDraw dialog turned sort of orangish when you keyed in your numbers? Those are locks. When you keyed in the 10 for the X value, the X button turned orange indicating the X value was locked. If you drag the mouse around, the X value will not change. This allowed you to drag the mouse in the Y direction without worrying about losing the X value. If a value is locked and you want to change it, you can type the X key on your keyboard to clear it. This will free your X value again.

Another nice feature of Accudraw is that it allows you to quickly and easily repeat the values you key in to the fields. The page up and page down keys will cycle through the values you have input.

Sweet Spot It also stores the last value in what I have always called the sweet spot. I guess it is really called the Previous Distance Indicator. It shows up as a small perpendicular segment near your pointer as you approach the last value you used. This can be really handy to repeat values over and over again.

Now I will show you how to draw a line 25 units long at an angle of 20 degrees. Select the Place SmartLine tool, data point in the view, hit the space bar to change AccuDraw to polar mode, move your mouse in the direction you want the line segment to go. Key in 20 in the angle field and 25 in the distance field, accept with a data point. Reset (right click) to complete.

Example 1

Draw Line at any angle. Place block at same angle along same plane.

Tentative snap to snap to upper right of line placed at any angle. Use O to set origin of compass. Use RQ or RE to rotate compass. Move mouse cursor to the right 3 units data point to start rectangle, data point to set opposite corner.

Example 2 Okay, that was a good overview of the basics, now let’s explore the efficiencies of AccuDraw a bit deeper.

Here is a box with a circle in it. To draw this, let’s start with the Place Smart Line tool. Data point to start the line. Move the mouse to the right allowing indexing to snap your line to the X axis. Key in a 7. Move your mouse up, or in a Y direction again allowing it to snap to the Y axis. As you move your mouse up, you should see the sweet spot appear. Since you just keyed in a 7, the sweet spot will quickly allow you to repeat that value. Complete the square allowing indexing and sweet spots to guide your data points.

Now for the circle.

Click on the Place Circle tool. Make sure the method is set to center. Tentative on the lower left corner of the square. Key in the shortcut O for origin. Move your mouse to the right, or in the X direction. Key in a 2. Move your mouse up, or in the Y direction, key in a 3. Data point to accept the new position. Move the mouse in any direction. Notice that the compass has changed to polar automatically. Key in .5, data point to accept the value, reset to complete.

Did you pick up on the shortcut that I just demonstrated? Keying in an O sets the origin of the compass to the location of your mouse pointer. You don’t have to be snapped to any particular location. I can move my mouse anywhere in the view and key in O. My compass obediently jumps to that location.

Example 3 Now let’s learn how to rotate the compass.

Here we have a line at some unknown angle and we need to draw a block parallel to that line. The block needs to be 8 by 3, and 2 away from the line.

Select the Place Block command. Tentative snap to the lower left end of the line. Do not data point. Key in O to set the origin. Notice that the accudraw compass appears at the corner we snapped too. Now key in RQ for Rotate Quick. The compass will now dynamically follow your mouse as you move around. Snap to the other end of the line. Data point to accept the compass rotation. Move your mouse in the Y direction somewhere near your compass, key‐in 2, data point to start your block, Move your mouse in the X direction, key in an 8, Move in the Y direction, key in a 3, data point to accept.

RQ is a nice way to quickly rotate your compass to any angle. Note that RQ is only good for one data point or a single command. After you click that one data point, the compass reverts back to its normal behavior. By default, that means that it will be oriented in a right side up to the view orientation, unless you are in the middle of drawing an element, then it will orient itself to the last segment of the elements that you have placed. Example 4 Here is another key‐in that can be quite handy. Draw a line at any angle and the compass rotates to that angle. Now you want to set it back to normal to draw a horizontal line. Well, if you have not rotated your view, you could key in V.

Draw a horizontal segment by allowing indexing on the X axis. Another data point, then another angled line, again, V to set AccuDraw to the view. You could also use T for Top in this example.

Example 5 Now for the Pop‐Up Calculator.

In this example, I want to place one more of these little rectangles in between the others.

I will use copy and select one of these rectangles. Then I will move the rectangle over to the one on the other side of the space from it, divide the distance by 2 with the pop‐up calculator and data point to place the rectangle exactly in the center.

To activate the pop‐up calculator, I simply typed the operator (in this case it was the divide by key or slash key) then type the number to divide by (2), data point to accept the location.

Be careful to let accudraw pull you in to the X axis, or you could lock the axis by hitting the enter key.

Another tip for this type of copy is to use the same point on both the rectangle you are copying and on the one you are using as a reference. Let me demonstrate. If I use the midpoint on this segment of the rectangle to start my copy operation, I want to let accusnap pull me into the midpoint of this rectangle then divide the distance by 2. If I don’t use the same point on both the other elements, my new rectangle won’t be exactly centered.

Example 6 Using this same example, let’s make several more copies of the rectangle off to the right at the same spacing.

To get multiple copies evenly spaced, I will first need to select the element to copy. I will use the element selection tool, data point on the object I want to copy, then I want to choose the tool, in this case, Copy.

You should notice the prompts that MicroStation is giving you. It says “Enter first point”.

Let AccuSnap pull you into the mid point on the rectangle next to the one we are going to copy, data point, then move to the midpoint of the element we are copying.

If you data point now, you will get one more rectangle at exactly the same spacing as all the others.

Then you could continue to slide your mouse to the right making copy after copy to your hearts content.

But if you use the Copy Element dialog box and enter a 3 for example, you will get 3 copies of the rectangle at exactly the same spacing without any more data points.

Example 7 Back to that centering of elements with the pop‐up calculator. Have you ever tried to fill out a table with text? Getting that text centered can be a little bit tricky. Here is a nice little workflow for that particular problem.

We need to move the text from the right into the columns of the table. Let’s pretend that we are perfectionists and we want each piece of text to be perfectly centered.

Start by choosing the move tool. Each piece of text was created with the justification set to center‐center for our test case. Let AccuSnap pull your mouse in to the center of the text, then data point to start the move.

Now to get the text perfectly centered, tentative on one of the corners of the fields. AccuSnap will pull you to the end of a line segment, or you can use the key‐in I to select the intersection of the lines. Then click O to set you origin to the corner you have selected.

Next go to the opposite diagonal corner and tentative there or let AccuSnap pull you in to the point. Key in /2 or divided by 2, notice the Pop‐up calculator under the X field, hit the enter key to accept the value from the calculator, then key in /2 again to get the Y field to calculate.

Hit enter, then data point to accept the position.

Now let’s place the rest of our text.

Make sure you use “I” when needed to get the intersect snap to come up.

You can also lock the axis and use other text to help you get the new pieces of text centered.

Example 8 Here is another little project. We need to draw a very simple wing wall with rebar.

Our wall needs to be 15 feet long and 10 feet high with rebar evenly spaced each direction. (This wall is not very well engineered, but it is just for illustration purposes.)

Let’s use the Bridge task to set our active attributes. Bridge>proposed>Substructure>Wall. Choose the Place SmartLine tool, then data point to set your first corner,

move the mouse to the right and key in 10, data point again to set the end of the line segment, move the mouse in the approximate direction you want the next segment to go and key in a 5, then tab and key in another 5, data point to accept.

Now we want to go straight down, but our compass is rotated to the angle of the last line segment we placed. Key in one of those accudraw shortcuts, I like T for top, but V for view works nicely too. The compass should rotate back to its original state.

Now move your mouse down and key in 5, data point to accept.

Move to the left and hit the enter key to lock the X axis, let AccuSnap pull you into the starting point, data point to accept, line your mouse up with your first point, data point one more time and your basic wing wall shape is complete.

Now for the rebar.

Rebar is under Bridge>Proposed>Miscellaneous> Rebar in the tasks.

Click to choose your place line tool.

Now we want to start our rebar 4 inches from the edge of our concrete. (I am using 4 inches so that it shows up better on my screen, usually it is around 2 inches.)

Tentative in the upper left corner of our wing wall shape, key in O for Origin, move your mouse to the right, key in colon 4 (: gives you inched rather than feet), move your mouse down, or hit the tab or down arrow key, key in another :4, then data point to accept your start point.

Move your mouse down, and lock your axis with an enter key (or an A), tentative to the lower line, key in an O for origin, move your mouse back up letting indexing snap you to the Y axis, key in a :4 for the offset, data point, reset to complete.

You have a piece of rebar. Now let’s copy this one to the far side of our wall.

Click on the Copy tool.

Data point on the rebar, move your mouse in the right hand direction, lock your axis, tentative on the orange wall line, key in an O for origin, move your mouse back a bit to the left and key in a :4, data point to accept.

Now for all those lines in between.

Click on the copy tool, select either piece of rebar,

Move it across the other piece of rebar, let AccuSnap pull you in to the midpoint, or you can tentative if you like,

Now for the tricky part. We want to place 20 total pieces of rebar, so we have 18 left to place, and there will be 19 spaces between the bars.

With that in mind, divide the space by 19, by keying in divide by 19,

In the Copy element dialog box, key in an 18 for the number of copies you want to make,

Data point to accept.

Now let’s do that again for the horizontal bars.

Draw the first bar by snapping to the ends of the other bars.

Okay, another little drafting tip. Draw a piece of rebar right on top of the sloped side.

Copy parallel the rebar with make Copy toggled off.

Let accudraw index along the X axis, (Notice that the compass it rotated to the element that we are copying when we use copy parallel.)

Key in the :4 for the offset distance. Data point to accept.

Now use IntelliTrim to cut of the extra length from the rebar. Maybe use Trim, or Extend Element to Intersection to finish off the last rebar line.

And just that quickly your wing wall complete with rebar is finished. Example 9 How about if I want to draw a closed shape that has arcs and lines. In this example, I want to draw the blue shape around the orange rectangle.

Let’s start with the Place Smart Line tool. I am going to snap to one of the corners and start my shape with a straight line. I will use A or enter to lock my axis, then let AccuSnap pull my mouse pointer onto the opposite end of the orange shape. Now for the arc that wraps around the corner. I will tap the tilde key. It is generally right below the escape key on your keyboard. Lennie pointed out to me that it is actually the grave accent key as you do not need to hold down the , but Bentley refers to it as the tilde key without a shift. Either way, just tap that key on your keyboard and the Place Smart line tool settings will bump from line to arc without breaking the line string. Proceed around the shape.

Example 10 How about that pop up calculator again. I can easily bisect this angle by setting my compass at the vertex, aligning my compass to one of the lines with another shortcut key‐in, RE (Rotate Element), make sure AccuDraw is set to polar by hitting the space bar, data point on the other line, then in the angle field (tab to and the angle field if necessary) hit divided by and 2. Enter, then move the mouse and data point.

Example 11 AccuDraw can be used to help place text aligned to elements too. Use RE.