The RealCADD Manual Mac version
RealCADD >> Preferences – Display...
The Display pane allows you to set the appearance and functionality of your drawing window.

Display unit. Checking this box causes the drawing units that are being used, to be displayed in the title of the Edit pallet. It doesn't display the units any place else, nor does it affect whether units are displayed in dimensions.

Tip: If "fractional feet and inches" or "fractional inches" are the selected drawing units, then foot (') and inch (") marks will be displayed in the Edit pallet items.

Display the rulers. Checking this box causes the vertical and horizontal rulers to be displayed. The rulers will be in the drawing units that have been selected. If "fractional feet and inches" or "fractional inches" are the selected drawing units, then foot (') and inch (") marks will be shown in the rulers, otherwise no units are displayed.

Tip: By convention in two-dimensional geometry, the x-axis is the horizontal and x-measurements are counted horizontally along it, measuring from its intersection with the y-axis. And the y-axis is the vertical, so y-measurements are counted vertically up and down it, measuring from its intersection with the x-axis.

Changing the zero point. As the default in RealCADD, the top left hand corner of the drawing window is the "zero point" where x=0, y=0. And positive x is counted from left to right; positive y is counted from top to bottom. So all the numbers you see on the default ruler will be positive, counted from the top left hand corner of the window.

You can change the zero point by clicking in the little box top left of the drawing window and dragging it down and to the right. Attractions selected in the Snap pallet apply, so, for example, you can drag the zero point to snap to the intersection of a horizontal and vertical line, so those lines become the new x and y axes – see illustration left.

This will bring up the "point of origin" window shown right. The default x and y co-ordinates shown in the window will be those of the the mouse position – in our example, at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines we have snapped on to. Clicking the OK button will change the zero point to that intersection – so the vertical line will be on the new x=0 and the horizontal line will be on the new y=0. And the rulers will now show negative x-numbers to the left of the vertical line and negative y=numbers above the horizontal line. You can restore the zero point to its original place simply by clicking the little box top left.

However, you can also set the intersection to be something other than zero. In our example, if you wanted the vertical line to be, say, -3700 in the x-direction you would add 3700 to the figure in the "x=0" box (so it would read "2003.7778+3700"). Clicking the OK button would make our vertical line at x = -3700, with the horizontal line at y=0. If you wanted the vertical line to be at +3700, you would enter "2003.7778-3700" in the "x=0" box. The same applies to the "y=0" box. You can change both x and y boxes, or just one of them>

Tip: Remember that you can reverse the y direction in the General pane, so that positive y is from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom.

Display the grid. The grid is normally a series of vertical and horizontal lines on the drawing window, rather like a sheet of graph paper. If the Grid attraction is set in the Snap pallet, objects will snap to the grid line intersections as you draw them, thus enabling you to draw things in a more structured fashion. As such it is probably more useful in drawings with regular geometric objects, than it is with drawings with a lot of curved lines and irregular shapes. The grid is present and functional whether it is displayed or not, but it's easier to use if it is displayed.

Tip: Displaying the grid can cause the program to run more slowly on very big drawings.

Dash. Check this to display the grid as dashed lines. The box beneath the checkbox is to select the colour of the grid lines. Hover over the box and press the mouse button to bring up the colour pallet; slide the mouse to the colour you want and let go the button.

Δx & Δy. Enter numbers in these boxes to set the distance apart you want the grid lines. The units will be whatever units you set in Preferences – General. If you don't want to use the grid at all, leave these settings at zero.

Tip: The grid is subject to whatever scale you have set (or are going to set) your drawing to, so you need to choose grid spacings bearing this in mind. For example 100mm grid spacings would be fine on a 1:10 drawing, but not so good on a 1:100 drawing.

Divisions. Enter a number in this box to set the number of divisions between your grid lines. So on a 100mm grid, for example, you might enter 10 divisions, which would give you a sub-division grid line every 10mm. The sub-division grid lines are displayed lightly dotted, whether the Dotted box is checked or not.

Isometric. Check this box to set the grid lines at 60º for isometric drawings.

Display page break. Checking this box displays the page breaks in your drawing for the page size you have set under File >> Page setup. Page breaks are shown as a fairly thick grey line. If your drawing size is the same as you page size, then you will see just one page break line all around you drawing. You can toggle page breaks on and off by clicking the "See pages" icon in the on-screen menu, bottom left on your drawing window.

Long crosshair. Checking this box gives you an x and y crosshair as you move the cursor about the screen, which is useful for lining up the cursor with other objects on the drawing. Unchecking it doesn't give you a short crosshair – it gives you no crosshair at all!

Dotted. Check this to display the crosshair as dotted lines. The box beneath the checkbox is to select the colour of the crosshair lines. Hover over the box and press the mouse button to bring up the colour pallet; slide the mouse to the colour you want and let go the button.

Display helptags. Checking this box will cause helptags, where available, to be displayed when you hover over a tool or pallet item. These are particularly useful in the early stages of learning to use RealCADD. Once you become very familiar with the program you may want to turn them off by unchecking this box.

Display attraction names. Checking this box adds further functionality (Enhanced Snap) to some of the "Snap" components as follows:

The select cursor displays a small additional textbox when a centre or endpoint is found.

The draw cursor displays a small additional textbox when an align, centre or endpoint is found. For "align" there is a further indicator on the object aligned to, showing the location of the alignment.

Objects are highlighted in green as you mouse over them – this works whether Snap is enabled or not.

Tip: The function can be toggled on and off by clicking the "Display attraction names" icon in the on-screen menu, bottom left on your drawing window.

Handles. Handles are the little black squares that denote the ends of lines, the corners of rectangles, the points of polygons and so on. They indicate the place at which a control point of an object may be picked up – to extend a line for example. For general drawing purposes the default value of 8 pixels is usually about right. But if you are drawing very thick lines for example, you may want to increase the size of the handles so that you can identify and grab them better.

Tip: When you select several objects at once, round blue "handles" appear to indicate the bounding rectangle of the selected objects. The size of these is also controlled by the handle size.

Anti-Aliasing. Checking this box smooths text and graphics on the screen for an optimum appearance. Normally leave this box checked. It can slow down a very big drawing, so maybe in that case you might want to un-check it. If you do, text will look less smooth and may not justify quite the same.

Tip: If your drawing is very big and Anti-Aliasing is slowing it down unacceptably, try breaking it into Layers (see Windows >> Layers/Pages...) and not having all the layers visible while you are working on the drawing and moving about a lot. Or use the View menu to set different views in the drawing and flick quickly from one view to another.

Save as default preferences. This does exactly what you'd expect: it saves your Preferences as the default. These will apply to any new drawing opened, but will not change the Preferences of previously saved drawings. Leave this unchecked if you are just setting Preferences for a single drawing and don't want them to apply to future drawings.