Pop Quiz: Transparent Commands

Level of Difficulty:
Q1: Complete the following sentence:
Transparent Commands are ______.
a. Like a fiesta in your mouth.
b. Your best friend.
c. Better than Coldstone icecream.
d. Both A and B are correct.

ANSWER: D



I happen to be having a fit of insomnia and feel compelled to tell the world of the virtues of this powerful cogo toolbox.

What are transparent commands?

Well, there have always been transparent commands in Autocad from way back in the pure key-in days. Today all the fun shortcuts and icons make them somewhat unused. In Civil 3D, however, they provide a way to be more specific about how a line is drawn (or a point is placed, or what have you) I think of Transparent commands as "nested" commands. For instance, you are drawing a line that needs to be N15d 20' 35.2"E at 120'. You start the plain old AutoCAD line tool. Once you are in the line tool you start a Transparent command; in this case Bearing and Distance.

Whallah! You have a way to specify a quadrant, bearing and distance.

Transparent Commands ONLY work from within another command. As we take our tour I will let you know what commands are most common with which Transparent Commands.

Angle Distance

This is ideal if you wish to enter information using angle-right and distance information. It is most often used with the line commands such as LINE, Pline, or creating a Feature Line. You can also place points relative to ech other using this command.



Bearing-Distance
The older cousin of the angle-distance command, Bearing-Distance allows users to specify a quadrant, angle away from the N-S axis, and distance from the previous point. It is used in similar situations to the Angle-Distance Command.

Remember, no matter how hard you try, you will never get an angle larger than 90 degrees.

Azimuth-Distance

This is another cousin of the last two, but the shyer one that doesn’t come out to party very often. This little guy references all his angles from due north.

Deflection-Distance

Another command that is looking for an angle-right (or angle-left if you are one of those weirdoes).