Monday, March 1, 2010

How to use unsupported characters in Sheet Set Manager

For SSM Sheet title and Sheet number not all characters are supported.
These characters are not supported by Autodesk: \ < > / ? " : ; * | , = `

The character names are backslash, angle brackets (less than and greater than), slash (forward slash), question mark, double "straight" quotation mark, colon, semicolon, asterisk, vertical bar (pipe), comma, equality sign (equals sign) and grave accent.

There are workarounds to use similar characters like the solution to Add a comma to the sheet title of a sheet in AutoCAD.

It uses a workaround by using a Unicode character very similar to the unsupported character.

Copy any of these examples:

⧵ ⧹ \ ⑊ ‹ › ˂ ˃ ⁄ ⁄ ∕ ∕ ̷ ﹖?︖❓ ʺ “ ” ː ˸ ꞉ ꞉ ː ; ;⁎ ∗ ✱ * ǀ ı ‚  ,꞊ ═ ꞊ ˋ ՝

Run the program CharMap.exe found in Windows Accessories>System Tools and there you can find special characters and copy them to use.

I’m working on a new release of SSMPropEditor and considered to add a test to warn the user but still allow these characters. In the current version there is no test for these characters and they do show up in AutoCAD’s Sheet Set Manager if they are entered within SSMPropEditor.

Unsupported characters showing in SSM

The only problem I’ve seen is that if you in AutoCAD try to edit the Sheet Properties you will not be able to make changes and still keep these characters there.

Update: Have you got “The name cannot be longer than 64 characters”? This can also be worked around using SSMPropEditor.

Please comment in below if you think I should remove the ability to enter these characters as it might have unexpected side effects. Or do you think this can be a useful workaround?

7 comments:

  1. here is my 2 cent. I would like the ability to use the workaround left in your program, because I use this workaround to show , or / when I need these special characters...

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  2. Some extra functionality never hurt...at least it usually doesn't hurt.

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  3. SSM also doesn't like the # symbol, such as "Well #3".

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  4. I like it the way it is.
    plus, if you can add a close fuction so you can close a sheet set without closing the application.

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  5. Remove the support for extra characters as default, and let only the brave have it as an option. Make the programs as close as possible to the Autodesk standard.

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  6. Please leave it the way it is.
    Thanks!
    Russ H.

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  7. I added a warning message like this:
    The property contains unsupported characters. These characters are not supported by Autodesk: \\ < > / ? \" : ; * | , = `
    Are you sure you want to use these?

    ReplyDelete