Skip to main content
T
TimSharp1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 13, 2011
Question

Can a macro hide and show toolbars?

  • January 13, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 2578 views

I write lots of macros to speed up drawing tasks in Isodraw and they fall into 3 useage categories.

  1. Ones that are used all the time
  2. Ones that are used a few times a week
  3. Ones that are used infrequently for specialist jobs.

Toolbars seem to be the only way for us to have macros easily accessible because the drop down Macros menu only lists the first 15 macros and they are only by macro name, no icons to give further clues to what they are for. I'd like to have all macros on toolbars, but it would get rather cluttered with all of them visible at once.

Is there a way that a macro can hide and show our custom toolbars? I'd like to be able to hide and show toolbars without having to go through the Window menu. The hide function works for the palette windows, but not the toolbars. Is there any other way?

Please PTC can you add into IML a facility to create menu windows!

    1 reply

    T
    thendricks12-Amethyst
    12-Amethyst
    January 13, 2011

    No luck. I've tried using the Menu command, but you lose control once the toolbar window opens. Control is not regained until OK or Cancel are selected.

    The second approach was to modify the prf file outside of IsoDraw and then see if IsoDraw could "refresh" (I used the sleep command), but no luck either.

    There is an enhancement in with PTC to add text to the toolbars as the little icons are handy for a few macros, but difficult when you have more than five or so on screen. I might recommend submitting an enhancement for this as well.

    T
    TimSharp1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    January 14, 2011

    Thanks for trying Trevor. I couldn't find a way to do this either.

    I think that the way of delivering macros to users needs an overhaul, it's one of the things limiting the development of macros and kind of shows that the IML was not seen as a serious way of developing new features in Isodraw, but mainly for the occasional timesaver macro.

    I agree about improving the toolbars, but would go much further than just text in the toolbars, I would have user defineable menus where you could set the width in characters, depth in lines, and where menu slots could contain icons, drop down boxes, text or the value of variables. This would allow development of much more useful macros.

    It's been several years since the last full release of Isodraw, with no apparent timescale for enhancement requests, so I would hope that if PTC are not spending much time improving Isodraw, then they could at least add some things into the macro language that would allow others to make improvements.

    Just out of interest, I've submitted a couple of enhancement requests for Isodraw, both last July, and both still with the status of "pending", but is there a way to see enhancement requests made by all users?

    Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement