• Technotes
• Saving Favorite Dimension Marker Settings

Winning Techtip of November, 2007:

Saving Favourite Dimension Marker Settings - by David Larrew, Nashville, TN, USA

Can Dimension Maker settings be saved as Favourites?

It would be nice to be able to assign a predefined Dimension Marker to every new window or door. Now it takes me more time to refefine the Marker than the window. 

It is known that the Door / Window Marker Settings are saved with the Favourite Settings. But, this also means, that whenever a new window / door is created, the Dimension Marker must be re adjusted from scratch.

To avoid this, you can follow David's advice:

{{{You can open the Marker object in the Library Part Editor and set all of your preferred parameters. Once you save and close the Object, the Marker settings will default to your saved configuration. }}}

Hint: create a backup copy of the Marker Object, just in case...

The original thread can be found at: http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=104051&highlight=tip

The actual steps required to edit the marker object are part of what makes this a 'power user' tip. With ordinary objects, you can select the object and then use the File > Libraries and Objects > Open Object command to open the GDL object (even if it is contained within an LCF), modify it, and then save it under a new name. Or, if the object library has been completely extracted into a folder structure, this same command can be used to browse to the desired object.

However, if you select a window or door marker and issue the Open Object command, you actually open the window or door. So, if the marker is contained in the library container file (LCF), how do you open it to achieve the result of this tip? The answer is to go to Options > Work Environment and to add the "Open Object by Subtype" command to your Libraries and Objects submenu. Open Object by Subtype is the only means to browse the contents of the otherwise-monolithic (but efficient) LCF file.

With Open Object by Subtype, expand the hierarchy so that you see General GDL Object > Drawing Symbol > Label and then you'll see a list of available window and door markers. Select the one you want to modify, click Open, and then follow the steps in the tip to create predefined parameter values that suit your needs, saving the result with a new name in your Company Library or Project Library.