Bangalore, India
We have been constantly bombarded with emails and calls asking how to configure GeoTools for Bricscad. Or- to put it more bluntly, the question is - "I have installed GeoTools and it is not showing up along with my Bricscad menus." What could be happening?
To help relieve some tech support pressure for us, I thought it would be prudent to put this up as a post here so that some of you who would want to eventually use GeoTools for Bricscad can save your and our time by reading this up in advance.
First, some background info: The GeoTools for Bricscad installer that runs when your double-click on 'geotools_bricscad.exe' goes through the normal motions of software installation and copies all the files to the destination folder. At the end of this install, you get a popup message that looks like this:
Now, this small message box explains it all and contains the key to getting your GeoTools up, running and visible in Bricscad. BUT, this is very often overlooked by most users and, as is common practice (even with me), the user clicks 'Ok' without often reading what is shown. Now, when you start Bricscad, you see no GeoTools.
Let me explain the reasons. Unlike in the installation of GeoTools for AutoCAD, there is no direct and automatic way to update the Bricscad profiles configuration during install. So, the procedure is simple but manual in the case of Bricscad.
Here is how you do it in Bricscad:
From the Settings menu, click on Settings. You get the Settings dialog box which looks like this:
Click on the Program Options -> Files -> Support File Search Path and open the box which shows the folder paths that Bricscad must search in order to find what it needs. It is here that you need to add the GeoTools installation folder so that Bricscad finds and load GeoTools each time it starts.
As you can see, I clicked on the two dots you see at the right-side end of the folder path box and brought up the folder list in a row-wise. I clicked on 'Add Folder' and added the folder name 'C:/Program Files/Coordinate Systems/GeoTools_Bricscad_EN' which is the default location where GeoTools would be the default path.
Once you have done this, you can move the folder to the top of the list so that GeoTools gets top priority while loading Bricscad. The last bit of configuration you need to perform is to ensure that the system variable ACADLSPASDOC is set to 1 (or On). To do this, type ACADLSPASDOC on the command line and type either 1 or On. This will ensure that GeoTools will load in all drawing documents opened subsequently after the first drawing has been opened.
Now, you are ready to go and start using GeoTools in Bricscad. Restart your Bricscad for the changes to take effect.
Discover Bricscad, discover GeoTools-AutoCAD & GeoTools-Bricscad, discover TechCenter . Brand new ways to work smarter in CAD!!
Comments