Format Display Dialog - Drawing Order Tab

Setting the order in which objects are drawn

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This topic relates to deprecated functionality. Design window functions are now superseded by those found in 3D windows.

Format Drawing Order

To access this dialog:

  • In the Format Display dialog, select the Drawing Order tab.

  • Type 'fdd' in the Design window followed by the Drawing Order tab.

This tab forms part of the Format Display dialog.

The Drawing Order dialog settings define in which order objects and overlays are set down on a notional piece of paper. The first item is at the bottom (or at the back) and subsequent items are placed on top of one another. An item at the back may be completely obscured whereas one at the front will be completely visible.

Use the up and down arrows, and the First and Last buttons to modify the drawing order of the objects and overlays to give the desired display.

Field Details:

The following fields are available on this tab:

Objects List: this area of the screen shows the order in which objects will be drawn to the Design window. Select an item to modify its drawing order, using the options below.

Up and Down arrows: moves the selected item up or down the list.

First: moves the selected item to the top of the list (meaning it will be drawn to the screen first).

Last: moves the selected item to the bottom of the list (meaning it will be drawn to the screen last).

Apply, OK, Cancel: as with most dialogs, you can elect to either make changes and apply them, keeping the dialog open or you can apply and close the dialog at the same time. Of course, you can also cancel the operation without applying changes. When applying changes, note that there will be a redraw of data, which may take several seconds, depending on the hardware involved and the size of the data sets in memory.

There is also a Preview pane on this screen, showing a representation of the drawing order.

You do not have to re-create display formats each time a new data file is loaded, or a new overlay is created; instead, you can utilizeData Display Templatesfacility to devise the optimum display format for a particular data type, and apply it to all objects as required. For more information on this, seeData Display Templates.

 

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 The Format Display dialog