Panorama > Forms > Graphics Mode
 
Form Object Blueprint

The Blueprint dialog sheet allows you to view and modify the raw specifications of selected objects in a form (or the entire form). Usually you would use the property panels for this (see Object Inspector Panel), but the blueprint allows you to directly access the “source code” for any object.

The fastest way to open this dialog is to select one or more objects, then right click and choose Blueprint from the pop-up menu.

You can also select the object and click on the Blueprint tool in the toolbar.

Here’s the Blueprint dialog sheet in action to change this star object from blue to red and from 5 points to 12.

The Blueprint dialog sheet is very handy for copying multiple object properties from one object to another, and also for transferring an object’s specifications into a procedure. In fact, the blueprint is actually ready-to-use program code. If you want to use the code to create a new object with these specifications, simply change the first line from changeobject to newformobject. In this example, the Blueprint dialog sheet is used to help make a simple program that creates a row of stars.

See NewFormObject for more information about creating objects with a procedure.

Editing a Blueprint in an External Program

It’s also possible to view and edit blueprint code in an external text editor program (BBEdit, etc.). To copy blueprint text into the clipboard, simply select one or more objects and choose Edit>Copy (or press Command-C). Then go to your text editor program and press Edit>Paste (or press Command-V). The blueprint code will appear in your editor. Here’s an example of what this looks like in BBEdit.

You can even make changes in the external editor and then paste them back into Panorama. To do that simply copy the text from the external editor, then use Edit>Paste into a Panorama form. Note that unlike the Blueprint dialog sheet described above, using the Paste command will create a new object (or objects) from the bluepring code instead of modifying existing objects.

See Also

History

VersionStatusNotes
10.0NewNew in this version