When you move the mouse over an object in Vdraft, an object tip automatically appears which displays information relevant for that object - for example a line displays its length and angle from horizontal. Starting with Vdraft 2.2, you can have your own custom object tips displayed.

When deciding what to display for an object tip, Vdraft first looks to see if the object has any extended entity data (xdata) with the application name EntityTip. It then uses the next few pieces of xdata (up to four) for displaying the object tip. When combined with the fact that some types of xdata are automatically modified when the object is modified, this can be a very powerful and easy way to view custom information attached to an object.

The following Visual Basic code attaches text to the currently selected objects that will be displayed as object tips.

    Dim Vdraft As Object
    Dim apps As Object
    Dim selection As Object
    Dim ent As Object
    Dim xdata As Object
    
    Set Vdraft = CreateObject("Vdraft.Application")
    Set apps = Vdraft.ActiveDocument.ApplicationIDs
    If Not apps.HasItem("EntityTip") Then
        apps.Add ("EntityTip")
    End If
    
    Set selection = Vdraft.ActiveDocument.Selection
    For i% = 1 To selection.Count
        Set ent = selection(i%)
        Set xdata = ent.xdata
        xdata.AddApplicationID "EntityTip"
        xdata.Add 1000, "This text will be displayed when"
        xdata.Add 1000, "the mouse moves over this object"
    Next i

Xdata comes in group code/data pairs. The group code describes what type of data will follow. In the previous example, the group code 1000 indicated that the data would be text. The following is a list of some of the xdata group code/data pairs that are used by Vdraft's custom object tips.

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