progeCAD support, tips and troubleshooting forum. progeCAD works very similar to some versions of AutoCAD. Moderated.

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#1656 by RobinL
Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:23 pm
This problem is made much harder because of the acknowledged BUGS in the drawing order code in prodeCAD 2011.

However, even if this was fixed, the current draw order commands are insufficient to properly manage the display order of entities that may have many entities that are positioned over the same X, Y location. In the diagram that I am working on I have over 20 layers, and in many location 6 or more entities use the same X, Y region. Drawing order is critical to get the right display as you make some layers visible while others are not visible.

The current DRAW ORDER command has 4 options, FRONT, BACK, UNDER, ABOVE.
- FRONT implies that it brings the selected object to the front face of the display (the manual is not explicit as to whether this the front of all drawing entities or just the front of all potentially _VISIBLE_ entities.

-BACK implies that it sends the selected object to the very back of the display (the manual is not explicit as to whether this the back of all drawing entities or just the back of all potentially _VISIBLE_ entities).

- UNDER and ABOVE don't define what they mean exactly either. But they also have another problem. They need a source and a reference entity.

If you select a large object that completely obscures that smaller object which you want to place the source entity UNDER, but you can't select the obscured reference object. Likewise, if that object is obscured by the reference object, you can't select it to place it ABOVE that entity.

It is not clear whether change to the draw order just considers visible entities or all entities.

SUGGESTIONS:
1) there needs to be a way to _view_ and _edit_ the whole topological sort of the drawing entities in the diagram. Managing more then 3 layers becomes a very time consuming iteration to achieve that goal (and then to have it all undone by having to send the hatched area to the back to get access to its boundary).

2) there needs to be another pair of draw order operations, that allow for incremental modification of the draw order, like EXPOSE to lift the selected entity one level in the draw order topological sort towards the front, and COVER to depress the selected entity one level in the draw order topological sort towards the back. These 2 operations are not dependent on a reference entity. These operations would make multi-level draw ordering much easier to mange incrementally.