GuideSIGN Plus 2024 Help
This feature is not available in GuideSIGN SIGMA.
While every effort has been made to make GuideSIGN Plus as simple to use as possible, it has many capabilities that may not be obvious through casual use of the program. To get the most out of GuideSIGN Plus, it is strongly recommended that you thoroughly read both this manual and all the dialog box help documentation accessed by pressing the Help button in each dialog box.
GuideSIGN Plus is supplied with a number of panel styles based on interpretation of the M.U.T.C.D. standards. Panel styles shipped with GuideSIGN Plus cannot be edited. However, you can create new panel styles based on the existing ones (see Panel Styles' Create New Panel Style). Unlike shipped panel styles, user created panel styles can be edited, renamed, or deleted.
By clicking Advanced in the Place Highway Text dialog box, you can create any type of text string with complete control over the height, font (letter series), horizontal spacing, and vertical justification of each component.
However, the Advanced parameters should not be used for routine changes to text heights. If none of the supplied panel styles have the text characteristics you want, a panel style should be created with the desired text characteristics.
Program Settings' Locks - Design Category dialog box allows certain automatic features to be turned on or off, such as automatic panel updates, report updates, dimensioning, and zooming.
For example, if you want to move an object without having the program resize the sign afterwards, clear the Auto update panel check box before performing the move operation. However, leave the Auto place dimensions check box selected because the dimensions should be updated after an object is moved.
GuideSIGN Plus allows separate sign panels to be placed adjacent to one another. To do this, create two separate panels complete with all legend elements. Then click Move Single Object to snap one panel into position next to the other using the Snap to Panel snap mode. When clicking the panel to be moved, click a point in an empty area of the panel. Clicking inside an object’s range will move the object, not the panel.
The panel anchor is the origin of the sign panel, which serves as the insertion point for sheets and reports. The position of the report’s origin must be considered when setting the panel anchor point when placing a panel. For most reports, the panel anchor point is in the center of the panel. For 'footer' reports (located below a sign), the panel anchor should usually be located at the lower-left corner of the panel (see Place Drawing Sheet -> Creating Custom Drawing Sheets in CAD and Place Report -> Creating Custom Reports in CAD).
Arrows and route shields can be sized automatically from the panel style parameters. For other types of symbols, the desired size (specified by height or width) must be specified in the Symbol/Sign Parameters dialog box that appears after the symbol is selected. All supplied signs and symbols were drawn in millimeter units.
Dimensioning is not limited to sign panels. Boxes, arrows, and route shields can also be dimensioned as separate objects. Copy or move an object to a place outside the sign panel, click Place Dimensions and then click the object to dimension it.
Interior components (such as the text inside a route shield) will be dimensioned, and the corner radii for boxes can also be displayed if you select the Border Specs check box in Program Setting's Dimensions - Design Category dialog box.
GuideSIGN Plus calculates the margins in each section of a divided sign using the same method (as set out in the Panel Styles' Margins Category parameters for the style used to create the sign).
In some cases, however, it may be desirable to be able to change margins independently (for example, the top and bottom margins in the top section of a horizontally divided sign).
The steps below outline how to achieve different margins in the top and bottom sub-panels of a horizontally divided sign. The goal is to end up with a top sub-panel containing 12" text, 6" margins, and an overall height of 24". The problem is that a standard margin calculation (1.0 times the text height) would give an overall height of 36" for 12" high text (12 + 12 + 12" = 36").