Properties (basic concepts)

There are several ways you can control several properties of objects, such as common entity attributes — color, line type, and line width — or properties that are specifically related to the entity type (for example: height of texts, dimension symbols and so on).

The program enables you:

• To set the current values of properties that will be applied to all new entities
• To modify properties of existing objects.

Setting/Modifying Current Properties

Current Properties are the ones that will be applied to all new entities created.

To set or the current properties, with nothing selected, right-click on a blank area of the drawing or model window and select Options/Properties in the shortcut menu, or start the ToolsOptions/Properties command. In the dialog box which shows up, select the Document Properties or the Entity Properties tab (see Property Categories).

You will be enabled to control both attributes common to all entities (such as color, line type, and line width), and attributes specific to particular types of entities.

The values you set in the Document Properties tab apply to all subsequently created entities. If you just have to set common entity attributes, you can use the Statusbar. The Statusbar enables you to control common entity attributes, such as color, line type, and line width. See Setting and Modifying the Line Type, Setting and Modifying the Line Width and Setting and Modifying the Color for further details.

You can also set the properties of a selected entity as the current properties. To do so, right-click on an entity and then select Set Properties as Current from the shortcut menu.

If you change some current properties such as color, line type, line width and so on using the specific commands (Color, Line Type, Line Width, ..., or the corresponding buttons in the Statusbar, as described in Setting and Modifying the Line Type, Setting and Modifying the Line Width, Setting and Modifying the Color) the new current values will be applied to the current document only and not to documents you should open later on. If you want your changes to apply also to subsequent documents, you must change the current properties using the Options/Properties command.

Editing the properties of an object

To edit the properties of one or more entities you can do one of the following:

• Right-click on the entity (or preselect the set and right-click), select Edit Properties (The command is also available in the Edit category of the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box).
• Start the Assign Properties command.

When using the Edit Properties command, the Edit Properties dialog box is displayed. By using the button in the following illustration:

you can also:

• Set the changed values as the current ones
  To do so, select Set Changed Properties as Current in the Options drop-down list and the current values of properties will be changed into the ones you just set.
• Set entity properties to those of an existing entity
  To do so, select the entities whose properties you want to change, and then start the Edit Properties command. In the Edit Properties dialog box, select Select Properties from Entity in the Options drop-down list. You are prompted to select an entity. Click on the entity whose properties you want to acquire. The properties of the selected entities immediately update to those of the entity whose properties you acquired. Click OK to close the Edit Properties dialog box.
• Cancel your local changes
  To do so, thus resetting all of the changed values to the ones of the parent style, click Reset to Style.

Related Topics

• Setting and Modifying Current Attributes and Entity Attributes
• Setting and Modifying the Line Type
• Setting and Modifying the Line Width
• Setting and Modifying the Color