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By: Paul Romanowsky, Siemens, Measurement Systems, PA, USA mail |
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Upon hearing that Darren Litherland, http://www.nethut.net/me10 , had developed a Spell Checker for ME10 I had to know more about it. After visiting Darren’s web site and reading about it I e-mailed him and asked him a few more questions. Darren is known for his great ME10 macros and after speaking with him I was convinced that this was a ME10 utility I wanted for my users. I am the CAD Administrator for my company Siemens, Measurement Systems and I have wanted a spell checker integrated into ME10 for along time. I review a lot of drawings generated by our users and frequently see misspelled words. A drawing is a professional document and it doesn’t look good when there are misspelled words on it. We purchased “HotSpell” recently thru Darren’s USA representative, Ray Dauphinais of Industri-ART Design. With our purchase also came support for HotSpell. |
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I have now been running HotSpell thru its paces for the last week. It’s a great tool. It comes standard with both English and a German dictionaries. At this point I have only used the English dictionary. Just like any Windows spell checker you can add words to your dictionaries allowing you to build it up per your company's needs. HotSpell also has the functionality to exclude certain text strings that may be common terms or abbreviations your company may use, such as: TYP, MFG, ASSY, XX, QTY, etc.. You build this list as you go. When building the list you can use wildcards of ‘*’ or ‘?’ to define a text string. Once a text string is on this list, HotSpell will no longer recognize it as a misspelled word. You can also set HotSpell up to ignore certain text fonts. |
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Once HotSpell has identified a misspelled word you can use a unique search window to find the correctly spelled text for the word. I have found it very simple to quickly get to the correct spelling. Once this is done you have the option of changing each instance of the misspelled word, one at a time, or you can use the Change All command to change all instances of it at once. Darren has also built in functionality to locate where on your drawing the misspelled word is located. |
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Another great feature of HotSpell is the support you will receive from both Darren and Ray. In testing HotSpell, I did find a few things that did not work correctly for me. Darren was very prompt in either pointing out what I was doing incorrectly or providing me with a fix to the code to correct the problem. When I say quickly, I mean within an hour in most cases. |
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My overall opinion of HotSpell is that it will make a great addition to anyone’s ME10 installation. I have not officially rolled it out to my users yet, but I have given them demos of it and they liked it a lot. I’m sure they will find it a great tool also. 05/02/2001 |
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