Drawing Groups allow you to group similar drawings together in the Drawings Manager. Each group has a unique group name and can have any number of drawings in it. TPC supplies some initial groups for you like As-Builts, Control Diagrams, Lots, Recorded, Research and others plus you can add your own.
Once your drawings are in groups, you can rearrange the groups, expand or collapse them (Windows 7/Vista only), hide or show them, or select the group name and all the drawings in it are selected automatically.
Organizing your drawings into groups is all about making it easier to manage your survey data.
To display groups choose Tools | Drawing Groups | Show Groups. This a toggle, so selecting it will either turn groups on or off.
To place drawings into a group, select (highlight) the drawings you want in the Drawings Manager, then choose Tools | Drawing Groups | Move Selected Items to Group. TPC displays the Groups dialog. The dialog title will say, Move 3 items to a group indicating that you have selected 3 drawings . The number will change to reflect the number of drawings selected upon entering the dialog.
Select an existing group from the list or type in the name of a new group (TPC will ask if you want to create the new group) then choose OK. TPC will place the selected drawings into the group and re-display the Drawings Manager.
Drawing Groups are displayed in the Drawings Manager based on their group sequence. You can change the sequence by moving groups up or down one group at a time or sending them all the way to the top or bottom of the view. You will probably use group sequence in conjuction with Collapsing or Hiding groups as explained below. Combining these group tools makes working with lots of traverses a breeze.
To manage groups, choose Tools | Drawing Groups | Edit Groups. Or you can choose Tools | View | Format View then select the Groups tab. TPC displays the Drawing Groups dialog. Here are some of the things you can do with groups, all of which are described in more detail in the Drawing Groups dialog.
Group names can be aligned Left, Center or Right in the Traverses Manager.
You can move groups up or down in the list or move a group to the top or bottom of the list. The list determines the sequence used to display Traverse Groups in the Traverses Manager.
Add a new group just by typing its name. TPC asks if you want to create the new group and inserts it at the bottom of the list.
You can delete any group that does not contain traverses. TPC supplies a default list of groups. If it includes some groups you are not likely to use or if you don't like the group names we've used, just delete them.
Each new survey you start reads from a default list of group names. These are your starting groups for the survey. Once you start using groups and settle on the group names you want to use, save your list as the default.
In Windows 7/Vista, you can collapse and expand groups. Collapsing a group hides any traverses in the group but leaves the group name displayed in the Traverses Manager. A small chevron (V) to the right of the group name indicates whether the group is expanded (points up) or collapsed (points down). Clicking on the chevron expands or collpases the group.
This convention is used throughout Windows Vista. Just open Explorer and choose View | Groups. You'll see what we mean.
Commands related to collapsing groups can be found in the View | Traverse Groups | Collapse / Expand Groups pop-up menu.
Collapse This Group - collapse just the selected groups.
Collapse All Groups But This - collapse all groups except the selected on. If more than one traverse is selected, only the last traverse selected is left expanded.
Collapse All Groups - collapses all the groups. You can then expand groups as needed using the chevron (V) to the right of the group name.
Expand All Groups - expands all the groups.
Windows XP does not allow groups to be collapsed and corresondingly does not display the collapse/expand chevron to the right of the group name like Windows 7/Vista does.
In Windows XP however, you can hide groups. Hidden groups do not display the group name in the Traverses Manager. You can turn groups on and off in the Groups dialog by checking the group name in the list. Gropus without a check mark in the box are hidden.
Hide This Group - hides this group so that it is no longer visible in the Traverses Manager.
Hide All Groups But This - hides all the other groups, leaving the selected group visible.
Show All Groups - show all the hidden groups again in the Traverses Manager.
Windows 7 / Vista selects all the traverses in a group when you select the group name. Just left click a group name and watch as all the traverses in the group get selected automatically. You can then right click the group name and select an operation to perform on all the traverses in the group.
This is handy for tagging and untagging traverses as a group. Once the group has selected all the traverses, just click the check box next to the traverse name to tag or untag all the traverses in the group.
Dialogs that list the survey's traverses (like the Offset to Alignment dialog)) take advantage of groups to help you select the traverse you want more easily. These traverse lists include the Traverse Groups along with each traverse. You can select a Traverse Group in the list to expand the group and show the traverses in that group. This makes it easy to pick the traverse you want.
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