User Interface

User Interface

The main window with a survey point set loaded: ribbon on top, Properties docked left, the floating command bar over the viewport, the ViewCube top right, and the status bar along the bottom.

The window is laid out top to bottom: menu bar, ribbon, drawing tabs, drawing viewport (with the Properties / Reports panel docked left), command line, and the status bar across the bottom.

Menu bar

Only three menus. Almost everything else is on the ribbon or the command line.

File

Note — the DWG items stay disabled until a converter is found. Hover them and the tooltip reads: DWG needs a converter: install the free ODA File Converter, or set GOSURVEY_DWG_CONVERTER to ODAFileConverter.exe or accoreconsole.exe.

Edit

The Undo item names the action it will reverse, for example Undo: Edit hatch.

View

Ribbon

Sections change with what you are doing. In model space you get:

In a paper layout the Draw/Modify/Annotate/Inquiry/Survey sections are replaced by a single Layout section: Rect VP, Poly VP (disabled), Plot, Batch. Double-click into a viewport (floating model space) and the normal model ribbon comes back.

Two sections appear only when they are relevant:

• PDF Underlay — when a PDF attachment is selected: Background toggle, Vectorize, a Fade slider, and per-underlay snap toggles (Lines / Circles / Text).
• Hatch — while HATCH is running, or when hatches are selected: pattern, colour, transparency, layer, angle, scale. With hatches selected the controls edit them live and undoably.

On the far right is the Layers section, with the Current layer dropdown. New geometry is created on whatever layer is shown there.

Hover any ribbon button for a tooltip that says what it does and gives the command-line equivalent. Tooltips can be turned off in Settings → Display.

Drawing tabs

Above the viewport. Each tab is an independent document — geometry, layers, survey points, paper layouts, plot scale, and undo history are all per-tab. Switching tabs switches all of it.

Tabs can be hidden with Settings → Display → Display File Tabs.

Drawing viewport

The drawing area. A CAD crosshair replaces the mouse pointer inside it.

A minor grid follows the view when GRID is on. While a command expects a point, dynamic input fields track the crosshair.

ViewCube

A cube in the corner of the viewport, model space only — a paper sheet is 2D and has no orientation to show. Click a face — TOP, BOTTOM, FRONT, BACK, LEFT, RIGHT — and the view eases to that orientation rather than jumping. See Views and Navigation.

Properties / Reports panel

Docked on the left, two tabs.

Properties shows and edits the current selection:

• General — layer, colour, linetype, lineweight, transparency, plot style. With nothing selected it shows the current text style and the default text height (in) used for new TEXT and MTEXT.
• Geometry — fields for the selected object type: start and end X/Y for a line, centre and radius for a circle, insertion and rotation for annotation, and so on.
• Selecting several objects of one type shows the shared fields with (mixed) where they differ; typing a value applies it to all of them. A mixed-type selection shows a count summary instead.
• Selecting a survey point shows its ID, coordinates, elevation, description, layer, and label style. Bulk editing is done in VIEWPOINTS.
• Selecting a PDF underlay shows its file, page, insertion, scale, rotation, fade, and snap toggles.

Reports collects generated reports as tabs: ALIGN transformation reports, traverse results, and exported-point reports. They appear here automatically when the command that produces them runs.

Full detail: Properties

Command line

By default a floating bar near the bottom of the viewport, with:

• a log of everything the program has told you (it fades when idle),
• an input box with fuzzy autocomplete,
• a hint line showing what is valid at the current step, with clickable [OPTION] links.

F2 opens the full-height console view. Ctrl+9 hides and restores the bar. The classic docked panel is available from View → Classic command dock.

Pressing Enter submits the command input from anywhere — you never have to click into the box first.

Full detail: Command Line

Status bar

Bottom of the window.

Left side

Right side

Dialogs and panels

These open as separate windows.