Changing Feather Symbols

A feather represents a flag or reference to another part of the drawing, or to an entirely different drawing. VidCAD offers a wide variety of Feather symbols to allow you to customize your drawing style to your individual taste and needs. However, you can only use one style in a drawing. A collection of folders within the terminal sub-folder contains the various symbols. Examples of each of the style are listed below, with the corresponding folder name.

The default feather for Imperial or Metric drawing styles is “Feather Arrow,” which is the top symbol on the image above. The most popular feather symbol is the plain style, which is stored in the folder called “Feather Plain.” To change the feather style, follow these steps.

Changing the Default Feather Style

1.    Use Windows Explorer to find your Terminal folder (C:\VidCAD\Library\terminal). In the Terminal folder, you will see two feather drawing (.dwg) files. When you create a feather in a VidCAD drawing, the program pulls the image from these files. In the following steps you will overwrite these files with drawing files of the same name, but different feather styles.

2.    Locate the folder containing the feather image you wish to use.

3.    Open the desired folder and copy both drawing files.

4.    Paste the files directly into the C:\VidCAD\Library\Terminal folder.

5.    Select “Yes to All” when prompted to overwrite the existing files.
Note: If you do not get a message asking if you want to overwrite the existing files, you did not copy directly to the terminal folder.

6.    Open a VidCAD drawing and create a feather to test for the new feather style.
Note: If you are beginning a new drawing, your feather style change is now complete. However, if you have already created feathers in an existing VidCAD drawing, and wish to change the style, continue with the following sequence.

Purging Existing Feather Symbols

If you have used another feather symbol in a drawing before, you must AutoCAD erase those symbols and purge the old feather style block from the drawing. To erase and purge the old feather block, follow these steps.

Note: These instructions are for drawings that have only a few feather symbols. If you wish to replace many feather symbols on a drawing, continue to the sequence of instructions on the following page.

1.    Open the drawing containing the feather symbols you wish to replace.

2.    Erase all existing feather symbols and associated cables from the drawing.

3.    After you have removed all feather symbols from the drawing, select VidCAD Equipment Purge from the VidCAD Equipment ribbon or toolbar.

4.    The VidCAD Purge window now displays showing all equipment blocks (including feathers) that have been erased from the drawing. Select “OK” to purge the old block definition.

5.    Your drawing is now purged of any feather symbols and any new feathers drawn will be in your desired style.

Replacing Existing Feather Symbols

If you have created many feather symbols in a drawing there is an easier method to replace them, instead of removing, purging, and redrawing all of them. In the following steps to replace feather symbols in a drawing, we will change all feather symbols. Please note this example has both Feather In and Feather Out symbols.

1.    Extract the desired feather symbol into the terminal folder.
Note: In this example we are changing feather arrow symbols to feather plain symbols.

2.    Open the drawing with the feather symbols you wish to replace.

3.    Select “Block” from the Insert flyout menu.

4.    In the Insert window select “Browse.”

5.    In the “Select Drawing File” window, navigate the “Look in:” to your C:/VidCAD/Library/terminal folder. Then select the “FEATHERIN--J.dwg” file and select “Open.”

6.    From the Insert window, uncheck “Explode,” then select “OK.”

7.    Select “Yes” or "Redefine" to update the definition of the existing “FEATHERIN--J” block references.

8.    Your Feather In symbols should now be redefined in the drawing. Press “Esc” to cancel the block insertion.

9.    Repeat the process for the Feather Out symbols.

10.    All feather symbols are now changed to the desired style and all future feathers will have the desired feather style as well.