Inside Track
Heber Allred zzTakeoffCollecting Input: Copy / Paste
When you copy items from a page and paste to another page, we assume you want it to re-size to the appropriate scale if the pages have different scales.
For Example: if you copy an area from a 1/4" = 1' scaled page and paste to a 1/8" = 1' scaled page, we should adjust the points to compensate for the scale difference (visually would appear 1/2 the size on the 1/8" scaled page in terms of pixels).
Do you think we would want the same to be true of annotations such as Notes or Arrows? If they copied a note from a 1/4" = 1' scaled page and paste to a 1/8" = 1" scaled page would it also resize the note and font size accordingly or keep the original note size?
This could maybe be impacted by whether you're copying an area + note also. Just thinking out loud. Any input welcome.
It's rare for me to run into this when pasting from one floor to another as the floor drawings we receive are typically all the same scale, so I'm not sure.
The biggest issue that comes up in other software for me with pasting from one floor to another floor is alignment.
After the paste I will have to select all pasted items and move everything in place, but once that is adjusted, I'm all set and can then make various adjustments for whatever variances occur on that floor.
Regarding alignment, we've been discussing internally, and I'm interested in your input.
After pasting, we're thinking of showing a little toolbar above the pasted items with Flip Vertical, Flip Horizontal, Rotate, Align, and Close (or a checkmark for done).
We were thinking the "Align" button would let you click 2 points and move all selected items from the first point and offset to the second point.
Alternatively, we could allow the user to somehow select an origin point when first copying, and make so that when you paste with CTRL + V, then it shows a semi transparent version and let you stamp it where you click (offsetting for the origin point you set when copying). We are leaning toward the toolbar option above since it may be simpler so that it's not asking you for an origin every time you try to copy something.
We are separately planning to have a "Takeoff Stamp" tool which would be a separate tool to stamp a group of items many times as a group (with ability to flip & rotate) and it's linked to the original set of items, so that modifying or moving the original set of items would modify all stamped copies.
Also, maybe for the sake of getting this update out quicker, we avoid worrying about the scale differences between pages for now and assume it's most common to paste between pages of the same scale. We can always put out another update after that can compensate for the scale differences.
Typically when I paste a note, I want it to be the same size as the note I copied from a different page regardless of the scale difference. The readability of the note from the perspective of the whole page is what matters to me. As for areas and maybe arrows, I could see the benefit of the scale adjustment, although I rarely find myself in this situation.
Regarding the hand holding after pasting via Align button, I like that. In other software, after you paste you're on your own.
I did want to mention that on many structures the floors get narrower/smaller as you go up, so even with align, there will still probably need to be portions of the pasted items that will need to be moved or removed anyway, as always.
A hint message could appear to remind users that they can hold the ALT key+mouse to move the remaining selected items maybe? Or perhaps just a really good demonstration video of copy pasting and aligning and moving so you can keep the UI clean and not jam it up with hint messages
The stamps thing sounds great, and is probably going to be very useful for other divisions
I just realized that when you guys eventually add undo/redo functionality, you will also have to account for undoing pastes and I guess these alignments too. 😂
If copying and pasting from/to different blueprint pages, then absolutely yes the items should follow the scale of the destination page.
However, in the case using “overlays” for takeoffs instead of pages, the distinction may be unnecessary since all overlays could be at the same scale, and the underlying pages/drawings are dilated to that scale.
See “Takeoffs On Overlays Instead of Pages” for more:
A small paste toolbar that would display right after you paste for quick move, rotate, and flip of the newly pasted items.
After pasting, you could just display the “handle” from the other thread and show 2 options: rotate or flip. These 2 options could then be hotkeyed during this action to give you tetris-like control of the paste orientation.
Sounds good John. We'll get some hotkeys on those.
Just testing copy/paste in zzTakeoff to repeat squares and align them. This is a good test for quickly repeating & aligning things. With real-time ability in zzTakeoff, you can now play checkers 😂
You can even highlight it all and flip vertical if you start losing. Just some quick tests for the features. They will be coming out very soon. We're doing final testing.
I agree with Jes that this is a bit rare. In the past I prefer to copy that page and set scale accordingly. However, that does not give me means to copy to scale. I am not objecting at all, just noting it seems rare in my experiences