This routine facilitates the user in performing massive conversions of entities in the drawing. For example, it can move all blue polylines into a designated layer or change the size of all yellow text.
The user can define a number of different conversion rule sets to work with drawings coming from various sources. Within one set, multiple rules may be selected to be executed at the same time on the set of entities.
In the left upper corner dialog sets of conversion rules may be added by clicking on the Add button. When the set name and file to store a set are specified, the set is added to a list of available ones. To pick a set for editing or to run it, highlight a particular set in the list and the list of the defined rules will appear in right upper corner of the dialog where users may either add/modify any conversion rules within the set or select rule(s) to be executed on selected entities.
When sets of rules are already defined, the dialog appears as shown below enabling the user to select multiple rules and apply them to the drawing. When a new rule is added, or when the user clicks on the Full Edit button, the dialog expands to show the actual rule definition for the currently highlighted rule. To execute rule(s), select one or more rules (hold Ctrl or Shift keys to highlight multiple items) and click on Execute button. When multiple rules are selected, these rules are applied in a top to bottom order on the entities that the user selects.
The top portion of the rule description defines additional filtering among the selected entities, allowing the user to narrow the user-provided set of entities to a small one containing only entities passing the filter. Filtering can be done by entity types, layer, linetype or color, or by any combinations of these. Filters may be defined easily by clicking on the Select button in either entity type, layer or color boxes and then selecting any entities which bear a desirable feature.
The bottom half of the dialog, Modified Properties, defines what
changes will be applied to the entities which are selected and pass
through the filter, if any. The following properties may be
modified:
Layer: The current layer may be changed to any one on the
fixed list of permitted layers. If this option is used, the user
has no control over color or linetype, since they come predefined
for every layer on the list.
Color: Specify color number
1..255 or BYLAYER
Linetype: Specify a valid
linetype name or BYLAYER
More properties that may be modified are Linetype Scale, Size, Thickness and
Text Size.
Pulldown Menu Location: Tools in GIS
Keyboard Command: convert_set
Prerequisite: None