Simtel MSDOS 1992 June

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DECORATOR DOCUMENTATION for I.B. Magazette by Karl Minor DECORATOR was written to aid anyone who must occasionally rearrange a roomful of furniture, and particularly for people who consider room-rearranging to be an enjoyable indoor sport. It takes the guesswork out of placing furniture by allowing the user to create the room layout on the computer screen before ever moving a single piece of furniture. This is done by obtaining the room dimensions and characteristics from the user, along with the dimensions of all furniture to be placed in the room. You may then move the pieces of furniture around on the screen until the room is arranged satisfactorily. If you have a IBM Graphics or compatible printer, you can then print a copy of the room layout. All rooms and furniture are stored on disk for later sessions. We have tried to make the program easy-to-use and self-prompting. However, you should read the following documentation at least once before using the program for any real application. CREATING A DECORATOR WORKDISK We suggest that you copy the DECORATOR program onto a separate disk before use, since it will create datafiles when run. You should keep one WORKDISK for each separate house or office that you intend to work with. The instructions below tell how to create a DECORATOR WORKDISK. Repeat the instructions for each WORKDISK you wish to create. 1. BOOT your computer in DOS. 2. Place your blank WORKDISK in drive B. 3. Type> FORMAT B:/s 4. Type> COPY A:BASIC*.* B: (Compatible users should also type COPY A:GWBASIC*.* B: ) 5. Remove the DOS disk from drive A and replace it with the MAGAZETTE disk. Type> COPY A:DECORATE.* B: 6. Type> COPY CON: B:AUTOEXEC.BAT BASICA DECORATE F6 (will show as ^Z) 7. Remove the disk from drive B and label it DECORATOR WORKDISK This disk is now a self-booting copy of DECORATOR. To run the program, insert the disk into your default drive and press CTRL-ALT-DEL. RUNNING THE PROGRAM Required 128K IBM PC or 256K COMPATIBLE hardware : 1 DISK DRIVE GRAPHICS CARD (optional) IBM GRAPHICS PRINTER OR COMPATIBLE If you have created a self-booting diskette, run the program by booting with the WORKDISK. Otherwise, type RUN "DECORATE" from BASICA. You will see a picture of a desk and the DECORATOR logo. Press any key to continue. At this point, if there is a furniture file on the disk, the program will load it into memory. You will then be presented with the main menu. THE MAIN MENU The MAIN MENU consists of three SUBMENU and three ACTION selections. The SUBMENU selections take you to different areas of the program. The ACTION selections allow you to toggle between METRIC and ENGLISH systems of measurement, remove all furniture from all rooms, or EXIT the program. 1. Design a room - Allows you to create a room and store it on diskette. When selecting this option, you will be given a chance to return to the previous menu. If you do not, the program proceeds to ask you for the dimensions of the room to be constructed. The room will be displayed on the screen, and you will be presented with another menu. This is the WORKING IN ROOM menu, and is where most work in DECORATOR will be done from. This menu will be discussed more later. 2. Create, delete, or view furniture - Allows you to enter the shape, size, and name of your different pieces of furniture. You must CREATE furniture before you can work with it in a room. The FURNITURE menu will be discussed more later. 3. Work in a room - Takes you directly to the WORKING IN ROOM menu with the room currently being arranged. If a room has not yet been selected, a menu of rooms available on the disk will be presented. If there are no rooms to WORK in, you will be taken to the DESIGN A ROOM section. 4. Change to Metric/Feet and Inches - Allows you to toggle back and forth between Metric and English forms of measurement. This may be done at any time during the program. 5. Remove all furniture from all rooms - The equivalent of moving all your furniture onto your front lawn. If any furniture has been put into any rooms, this selection will take it ALL back out. If you accidentally select this option, you will be given a chance to abort. 6. Exit to BASIC CREATE OR DELETE FURNITURE MENU This menu allows you to add to or modify the furniture stockpile, as well as letting you view individual pieces of furniture. All furniture is kept on one file on the diskette. This is referred to as the furniture STOCKPILE. It is loaded from disk at the beginning of the program, and is saved to disk whenever a ROOM is saved, or when you EXIT the program. If you exit the program with a CTRL-BREAK, you may lose any changes to the furniture STOCKPILE. It is safe to exit the program with F8, or with any of the EXIT options within the program. 1. ADD A PIECE OF FURNITURE - Use this option to add pieces of furniture to your STOCKPILE. Up to 90 items can be added to a single furniture file. You will be asked whether the furniture is rectangular or circular. These are the only two shapes supported by the program, for purposes of speed and simplicity. Oval furniture should be represented as a rectangle, and complex desks or sofas (such as L-shaped items) should be entered as two separate rectangles. Large, permanent pieces of furniture, such as bars, hot tubs, and waterbeds, should be entered as a PERMANENT FIXTURE in the room. This is described in the WORKING IN ROOM section below. Any piece of furniture over eight feet in diameter or width should be entered as a permanent fixture also. After you enter the shape of the item, you will be asked for its measurements. The only measurement required for circular objects is the diameter (the width). Rectangular pieces of furniture must be given a length and width. It makes no difference which measurement is the length and which is the width, as long as you can keep up with it. You will be asked for a label to be assigned to the furniture (i.e. BLUE CHAIR, OAK TABLE, etc.). This label can be up to 12 characters long. 2. DELETE FURNITURE - When selecting this option, you will be presented with the FURNITURE STOCKPILE MENU. The item you select will be erased from the STOCKPILE. You can escape this option by pressing ESC or answering NO to the "Are you sure" question. 3. VIEW A PIECE OF FURNITURE - If you need to review the furniture STOCKPILE, this is the selection to use. You will be shown the items available and allowed to pick a particular item for view. That piece of furniture will then be displayed along with its dimensions. THE FURNITURE SELECTION MENU In certain parts of this program, such as the VIEW FURNITURE or DELETE FURNITURE options, you are required to select a piece of furniture from the STOCKPILE. This is accomplished through the FURNITURE SELECTION MENU, which operates as follows. UP and DOWN arrow keys move the pointer (>) vertically among the items. LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys move the pointer between the two columns. If there are more than thirty pieces of furniture, The PG UP and PG DN keys will switch between the sets of thirty items. ESC will leave the menu without a selection. WORKING IN ROOM MENU Most of the work is done from this menu. It is used to add doors, windows and fixtures to the room, and is also used to move furniture into or out of the room. Doors, windows and fixtures may be added to a room at any time. Remember to SAVE the room before exiting the program. 1. ADD A DOOR - This allows you to add a door to the room you are working in. When selecting this option, you will be asked to move the cursor to the point at which the HINGE of the door will be. It is important to mark the HINGE first when creating a door or it will open backwards. For more information about using the cursor, refer to USING THE ARROW CURSOR below. After you have marked the hinge, mark the other side of the door. You will then be asked whether the door opens into or out of the room. If the doors opens in, a curved path of the door will be drawn, indicating the area which must be clear for the door to open properly. You can add up to ten doors, but they can only be entered on the outside walls of the room. If you have a closet door which is not on the outer perimeter of the room, you can use the PERMANENT FIXTURE option to indicate where the closet door will be. 2. ADD A WINDOW - This option works much like the ADD A DOOR option, with the exception that windows don't have hinges and don't open in or out. You simply mark both ends of the window. 3. ADD A PERMANENT FIXTURE - You should use this to add any features to the room that can't be entered as doors, furniture, or windows. Some examples would be poles, room partitions, steps, or bathroom fixtures. When selecting this option, you will be asked if the item is rectangular, circular, or diagonal. If entering a circular object, you will be asked for the diameter and the point in the room that the object's center will be located. If entering a rectangular object, you will mark the upper left and lower right corners of the object. The diagonal option is not limited to diagonals. It essentially asks for two points in the room and draws a line between them. NOTE: Permanent fixtures cannot be moved or deleted once they are placed. 4. SAVE THIS ROOM AND CONTINUE - This stores the room and everything in it to disk. It is a good idea to save the room often if you are working in a complex room. When selecting this option, you will be asked for a name for the room. If the name you give the room is the same as a room already on the disk, the room on the disk will be erased, so be sure to give each room a different name. Room names are limited to eight characters and can consist of letters and spaces only. The furniture file is saved to disk also whenever this option is used. 5. WORK WITH FURNITURE - This routine is what DECORATOR is all about. It allows you to select a piece of furniture from the stockpile and place it anywhere in the room. The furniture can be moved about the room with the ARROW KEYS and SHIFT-ARROW combinations. Furniture can be rotated around its axis by pressing the + and - keys. If a piece of furniture is moved off the screen, it will be returned to the center of the room. When the furniture is placed where you wish to leave it, press ENTER. The furniture now becomes part of the room and will be saved to disk as being located in that particular position in that particular room. This routine also lets you remove a piece of furniture from the room. Select the item from the menu and press ESC to return it to the list. The room will be redrawn. To move a piece of furniture that has already been placed in the room, select it from the FURNITURE menu. The room will be redrawn and you will have control over that piece of furniture. 6. REMOVE ALL FURNITURE - This option will remove all furniture from this particular room and return it to the list. This is similar to the option on the main menu, except that it only removes the furniture from the room that is currently being arranged. 7. VIEW THE FURNITURE - This selection is the same as the VIEW A PIECE OF FURNITURE option under CREATE AND DELETE FURNITURE. 8. RETURN TO MAIN MENU - Brings you back to the Main Menu. USING THE ARROW CURSOR In several areas of the program you will be required to use a graphics cursor to enter room features or to move furniture. This cursor is shaped like an arrow and will always point toward the upper left corner of the screen. The point on the screen that the arrow points to is directly beneath the tip of the arrow. To move the arrow, use the arrow keys, located on the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard. Pressing the arrow keys by themselves will move the cursor arrow in increments of one inch if you are using English measurement, or one centimeter if you are using Metric. By pressing SHIFT+arrow key, you will move the cursor in increments of feet or decimeter, respectively. POSITION BOX - When using the arrow cursor to mark doors, windows, or fixtures, a box will appear on the right side of the screen. Within this box are four numbers indicating how far the cursor is from each of the four main walls. For example, the number between the arrow and the top of the box indicates the distance between the cursor and the top wall of the room. This let you see exactly where you are in the room, allowing you to precisely position doors and windows, etc.. MARKING DOORS AND WINDOWS - When creating doors and windows, you will notice that the cursor cannot be moved away from the walls. These features cannot be placed in the middle of the room. MARKERS - When marking a box, line, window, or door, the cursor will usually leave behind some sort of marker to indicate where you placed the first corner or point. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ROOM FILES - Each room is saved as a separate file on the diskette. No provisions were made for deleting a room after it is created, to eliminate the chance of accidentally erasing a lot of hard work. If you need to erase a room file or the furniture stockpile file, do so with the KILL or ERASE commands from BASIC or DOS. SCALE - Although the furniture and room are all scaled to each other, the horizontal and vertical axes may not be scaled to each other perfectly. This is rarely noticeable, and will cause no problems when moving furniture. If your computer uses an LCD screen, chances are the display will look odd. HARDCOPY - IBM DOS includes a file named GRAPHICS.COM that will allow users with IBM Graphics Printers or IBM Graphics compatible printers to obtain a hardcopy of a room layout. Before entering BASICA, type GRAPHICS. If using a self-booting disk, add the command GRAPHICS to AUTOEXEC.BAT before the BASICA DECORATE command. This will modify the SHIFT-PrtSc routine so that it will print a Graphics dump of a room layout screen. To get this dump, press SHIFT-PrtSc while the room is on the screen.