Key Concepts

3 Key Concepts

Assimilating these four concepts will make the rest of ColorCaps more intuitive.

1. Big PNG (Big Ping) Files

Big PNG files are standard .png image files, except the bit map dimensions are very large. ColorCaps is optimized to handle these large bitmaps. Big PNG files can be images of TrueView/AutoCad® plot lines, or images of model lines from programs like Sketchup®.

Import model lines into ColorCaps using File/Import Model Lines. All dark pixels will be converted to lines and light pixels will become transparent. The resolution of a big PNG of model lines can be 4000 x 3000, for example, but the higher the better, especially if the model has a lot of detail. However, it is often much quicker to add ColorCaps line detail to a simple model than to create an elaborate 3D model.

Import plot lines into ColorCaps using File/Import Plot Lines. Color and other visual enhancements can be added to the drawing without losing any of the plot detail, and the result can be printed to any Windows printer – small, medium, or large format.

A 36-inch wide x 24-inch high drawing will be 14400 x 9600 pixels. An RGB image this size would normally overwhelm the memory in a PC, but in this case the image is kept in a compressed form and is never fully expanded. The lines can be colored mappings of pen widths, and ColorCaps can assign line characteristics to each plot color. White or near white is considered transparent.

2. Layers of Lines, Lighting and Color.

ColorCaps drawings consist of one or more image layers stacked on top of each other. Each layer contains separate image overlays for Lines, Lighting and Color.

Most of the operations in ColorCaps are done on the selected layer.

The basic operations on layers are available with the Select Tool. The Select Tool control bar appears when ColorCaps is launched and it can be selected at any time by pressing the Select Tool button on the main toolbar. The main toolbar is always visible. The Select Tool operations include selecting, moving, cropping, expanding, resizing, stretching, compressing, and rotating.

Within a layer, the lines, lighting and color can be edited separately using the corresponding Line Tool, Lighting Tool and Color Tool on the main toolbar. The Layer menu contains other operations for layers.

Also, the main toolbar has a set of buttons for each layer. You can quickly see how many layers you have, which one is selected, and press a name to select a different layer. There are buttons for Dim, Hide, and Fix for each layer. Drag the name of the selected layer to move it in the order. Click on the selected layer to get a “Merge Into” cursor, then click on the name of the receiving layer.

3. Tooltips

ColorCaps has tooltips on all the menu items, tools, and controls. The tooltips are the primary working help mechanism, once the basic concepts have been assimilated.

Just pause the mouse pointer on the item of interest and the tool tip will pop up.

In general, the more you read the more detailed it gets. Some of them are quite lengthy, but you don’t usually need to read the whole thing.

Each control bar has a title on the left, and mousing over the title will give you the overview tooltip.

Note: Some controls are disabled when it is inappropriate to use them. The tooltip will not pop up on disabled controls. It will pop up on disabled menu items.