Settings

Carlson Civil uses several techniques to store settings. There are three main categories of settings; Drawing Setup settings, such as drawing scale and units, Command-specific settings, such as the layer to draw contours on, and Generic control settings, such as whether to link drawing points to the external coordinate file (.CRD).

Drawing Setup settings are stored directly within the drawing files (.DWG). Carlson Civil also creates a file for each drawing using the drawing name with a (.INI) file extension. This file stores a list of all of the design files that are used or created from within the drawing, such as centerline files (.CL), profile files, (.PRO), etc.

Command-specific settings are stored within a set of files with (.INI) file extensions, with the command name as a filename, such as roadnet.ini, or mapcheck.ini. These are typically stored in the \USER folder, and are created as the commands are first accessed.

Generic control settings are stored within a special (.INI) file named Carlson.ini. When new drawings are created, this file is read to set these type of generic controls.

Drawing Setup settings can be accessed directly from the Settings menu, or through the Configure command. If the Drawing Setup dialog is accessed through the Configure command, when exiting the main Configure dialog, the user is prompted whether to save changes to Current and Future drawings, or Future drawings only. Current and Future saves the Drawing Setup settings to the current drawing internally, and updates the Carlson.ini file, while the choice of Future Only does not affect the current drawing, only the Carlson.ini file, and therefore any new drawings created. To change Drawing Setup settings for only the current drawing, do not go through Configure, but use the Drawing Setup command directly off of the Settings menu.

Command-specific settings are accessed when the commands are actually run. The settings displayed are being read from the command’s own specific (.INI) file, and any changes made are written to the same files. This way the commands automatically recall the settings that were used for the previous run. Alternatively, the Configure command can be used to access command-specific settings.

The Configure command provides access to a dialog box with 12 buttons, each leading to settings for specific aspects of the software. Changes made within any of these are also automatically saved to the corresponding command (.INI) file, or to the Carlson.ini file in the case of generic settings. The Configure command also provides a Save and Load functionality, utilizing configuration files (.CFG). Saving a configuration file (.CFG) saves all settings currently stored in all of the command-specific (.INI) files, and the Carlson.ini file. Loading a configuration file (.CFG) sets all settings within all these files.