Over 200 Carlson Software settings can be specified in the Configure command on the Settings menu. These values are used to initialize Carlson Software options when opening a new or existing drawing. Among these settings is the coordinate point number format, object linking options, and settings for the COGO portion of Carlson Software. The template drawing is the default drawing that opens up each time Carlson Software is started. To customize the template drawing, run the OPEN command under the File pulldown menu, change the files of type setting to Drawing Template and choose the template drawing, “survey.dwt”. Then make your changes and SAVE the drawing as survey.dwt in the Template folder.
When starting a new drawing, one of the first steps is to run Drawing Setup in the Settings menu. Drawing Setup sets the drawing scale, the units mode as either english or metric, and the text, symbol and linetype size scalers. The initial values for these Drawing Setup variables are set in Configure > General Settings. When a drawing is saved, the Drawing Setup variables are saved with the drawing. Carlson Software will set the text height according to the drawing scale and text size scaler set in Drawing Setup. For example, if the horizontal scale is set to 50 and the text size scaler is 0.1, Carlson Software will draw the text with a height of 5 (50 * 0.1). Then, when the drawing is plotted at 1"=50', the text will be 0.1 inches.
Every drawing remembers the data files that are being used for the drawing. When the drawing (.DWG) file is saved with the SAVE or SAVEAS command, Carlson Software writes a settings file that contains all the active data file names. Then, when the drawing is reopened, the data files default to their previous settings. For example, you won’t have to choose which coordinate file to use unless you want to change it. The settings file is stored in the same folder as the drawing file, and has the same name as the drawing, with an .INI extension. For example, a drawing called survey.dwg would have a settings file called survey.ini.
The Drawing Explorer command, in the Settings menu within the Project command, tracks and stores project files associated with each saved drawing. You may use this command to generate a report of all files used in a particular drawing. Project Explorer takes this concept one level further and allows you to group drawing files and their associated project files. Reports can also be generated using this tool.