IMAGINiT Civil Solutions Blog

Civil 3D: The Case of the Missing Button

It’s a script fit for a Perry Mason** drama.  An otherwise perfectly operating dialog is missing a command button.  Here’s the scene of the crime.

About where that red circle is there should be a button with a folder icon which would allow you to select the folder containing your fieldbook file.  The strange thing is that everything else seems to work OK.  You have all the Civil 3D service packs and the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 installed.  Perhaps, if you stretch out the dialog a bit to the right, the button will appear.  You try it and no luck with the button.

You may suspect that someone has been tampering with the evidence, though.  If you place your cursor in the field that should contain the path to the file, hit the TAB key, then the ENTER key, you will see the folder dialog pop up just as if you had clicked on the missing folder button.  The body’s not dead, it’s just vanished.

So, who dunnit?  Well, this may be a result of organized crime, but the one convicted in this case is the Windows font size setting.  I’m running Vista 64 on my Dell Precision 4300 and if I keep with the normal font size, everything works OK.  If, however, I increase the font size beyond the 100% setting, then there’s the crime.

I think I need further investigation; there could be a few accomplices here.  Perhaps video drivers or hardware.  The main culprit, though, seems to be Windows.

I’d like to hear from anybody who’s witnessed this sort of thing.  More evidence might turn up some interesting aspects of this crime and bring more suspects to justice.

**(Author’s note.  If, unlike me, you haven’t spent most of your life in the last millennium, and don’t know who Perry Mason (played by Canadian actor Raymond Burr) was, here’s a bit of history.  Perry Mason was the first courtroom drama on TV and ran on CBS from September 1957 to May1966.  William Talman played Hamilton Burger, the unfortunately named District Attorney.  Each week in court, we got to see Perry Mason make hamburger out of Ham Burger.)

Making the Quick Properties Dialog Box Behave!

OK, after a year end absence, I'm back!  My last post on the Quick Properties dialog box generated an interesting comment on positioning the box.  While the dialog is really helpful, it can get in the way, sometimes, and can be annoyingly close to the cursor.  Fortunately, you can make the Quick Properties dialog behave.  Here's what you do.

When the dialog is visible, right click on the gray border and select Settings from the pop-up menu.

The Settings dialog gives you the option to either position the Quick Properties dialog dynamically relative to the cursor position, or in a fixed position on the screen.

Using the Cursor location mode, you can position the dialog in a quadrant relative to the cursor and set the distance from the cursor (0 to 400 pixels).  The Float location mode places the dialog in a static location on the screen.  You can reposition it by dragging it around.  You can also reposition the dialog if you have selected the Cursor location mode, but its initial position will be determined by the values you have set.

Click OK and you're done!