CLOUD

Purpose:

The Cloud primitive is used to make the user pay attention to an updated part of the drawing. It consists of a closed contour making up a "cloud"-like shape.

Instructions:

1. The cloud contour is defined by a user-given closed control polygon. Along this polygon, a number of consecutive bulges will be derived, making up the resulting cloud contour. The number of bulges along each side is controlled by the Default Keyword CLOUD_BULGE_MAX. Furthermore, the color and line type of the cloud is controlled by the default keywords CLOUD_COLOUR and CLOUD_LINETYPE.

2. The vertices of the control polygon is given by user, one by one, and completed by clicking Operation Complete. The polygon will then automatically be closed by the system. A special case of the polygon is the axis-parallel rectangle, defined by two opposite corners. Click Options before giving the first vertex/corner to toggle between these two ways of defining the polygon. To remove a previously created cloud, select Edit, then Delete, then Last Entity at this stage.

   Once the control polygon has been defined, the resulting cloud contour is automatically created. The number of bulges along the longest side of the polygon is controlled by the default keyword CLOUD_BULGE_MAX. The number of bulges along any other side of the polygon will then be relative to the length of that side, compared to the length of the longest side.

   Finally, 'corner' bulges (that means, bulges between adjacent polygon sides) will join 'side' bulge sections (that means, bulges along a specific polygon side) into a continuous and closed contour.

   It should be mentioned here that the bulge points, that means, the points joining adjacent bulges, will be based on a uniform distribution along each polygon side with a slight random deviation.

Options:

None.

Result:

A general cloud component will be created in the current drawing, according to User's action.

remove a previously created cloud, select Edit, then Delete, then Last Entity at this stage.