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Coinciding with the acquisition of VIA Development, Nate joined Autodesk in March of 2003 after a decade stint as an entrepreneur following a two-decade stint as a controls engineer and software applications developer at Owens-Corning. Nate is now the lead product architect for AutoCAD Electrical. He loves this stuff.
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Presetting your Surfer "Zoom" factor - AutoCAD Electrical
September 14, 2007, 11:55 PM Nate HoltThe Surfer is a cool tool. But the first time you surf to something on a non-active drawing, the surf "zoom up" factor may not be appropriate for the detail found on that drawing type.
Perhaps you're surfing from a motor starter coil on the schematic to the physical motor starter representation on the panel layout. Surfer might end up looking close-in, right on top of the tag-ID attribute on the footprint. You can easily zoom out a bit and then hit the "Zoom Save" button on the Surfer dialog to save this zoom setting.
From then on, this won't happen again on this drawing - Surfer will "know" the appropriate zoom factor each time it returns to this drawing.
But wouldn't it be nice to have your AutoCAD Electrical-compatible schematic and panel layout template drawings already set up with the appropriate Surfer "zoom factors" in place? Here's how.
Step 1 - Save a good "zoom" factor value.
Surf to a component or footprint on the target drawing type, adjust the zoom in/out until you're happy, and then select the "Zoom Save" button. This saves the current "zoom magnification" factor as an "Xdata" value on your drawing's WD_M block (invisible block used by AutoCAD Electrical for storing drawing-specific settings).
Step 2 - Find the drawing's WD_M block insert.
Now you need to figure out what the Xdata value was (that was just saved to the drawing's invisible WD_M block). Close the Surfer dialog. Type ATTMODE at the command prompt, hit [Enter], type in a value of 2, hit [Enter] again. This will make all attributes "visible". Pan down to near the 0,0 point on your drawing.
You should find a column or two of tiny text floating in space. One of these is the WD_M block's invisible attributes and, if there's a second smaller column, the panel settings WD_PNLM block. We're interested in the taller list that is the WD_M block's attributes.
Step 3 - List the Xdata found on this WD_M block insert.
Select the AutoCAD Electrical "Xdata editor" tool from the "Projects" pull-down menu --> "Extras".
Pick on the taller column of attributes. If you've done the Surfer "Zoom Save" on this drawing, you should see an entry with a "VIA_WD_SURF_ZOOM" label.
Note the value for this VIA_WD_SURF_ZOOM entry. We're done here. Type ATTMODE at the command line and change the value from 2 back to 1 (normal display of attributes).
Step 4 - Modifying the template drawing with this Xdata value.
Now open up your template drawing (of the same type - i.e. schematic or panel layout). It needs to have the WD_M block already in place. Make all attributes visible per Step 2 above. Re-invoke the Xdata Editor tool (per above) and pick on the WD_M block's column of attribute values. Select the "Add New" button. Enter in the Xdata name shown below and the value that you found in step 3. Select "OK" and "Save Changes" and then save your modified template.
That should do it. The zoom factor should now be automatic for any new drawings that you create using this pre-set template.
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I know, I know... you're wondering why AutoCAD Electrical uses Xdata tags with a "VIA_WD" prefix, right? Answer: legacy.
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