University of Central Florida
Civil and Environmental Engineering
CWR4101 Hydrology
Frequently Asked Questions


How Do I Print a Screen from Quick Basic?

This depends on whether you have run Quick Basic from within Windows or DOS. If you ran from Windows you should know how to do two things; scroll through active windows and capture screens to the clipboard. Scrolling through active windows can be done with the Alt-Tab (try it). Also try the Ctrl-Esc key combination to see all active windows. You must also know how to capture the screen; the Print Screen key will capture the entire screen to the clipboard, the Alt-Print Screen will capture only the active window to the clipboard. But how to print this captured window? Windows does not supply a clipboard printer, however the contents can be pasted into Word or into Write and then printed from either of those programs. You should become familiar with this process.
If you ran Quick Basic from DOS, DOS will control your printing capability. Hitting Print Screen will send you page to the printer, however it will not send a form feed. You must manually take the printer off-line, hit the form feed button on the printer, and then put the printer back on-line.


How do I Copy and Paste Data From DISTRIB and REGRESS?

To copy and paste it is best to know the key codes for the action.

Control-Insert - Copies Highlighted Data To the Clipboard
Shift-Insert - Pastes Data From Clipboard into Application

So to take data from a spreadsheet such as Excel, first higlight the data and hit Ctrl-Insert. Then Switch to DISTRIB or REGRESS. Place the cursor on the point in DISTRIB or REGRESS where you want to paste the data and hit Shift-Insert. The same applies to copy and paste from DISTRIB or REGRESS bak to Excel. This will allow you to take the prediction and put the data in your spreadsheet for plotting, etc...


I can't get into my AutoCAD drawing - it keeps telling me it is locked.

When you use AutoCAD, the program creates a file with the same name as your drawing, but with a DWK extension. (Drawings have a DWG extension). When you quit AutoCAD (QUIT command), the program automatically deletes this file. If you don't exit autocad normally then this file is left behind. The purpose of this file is to tell AutoCAD that the drawing file of the same name is in use and not to let anybody else use it. To get into the drawing delete this DWK file and you will be able to open your drawing.


AutoCAD won't let me use the TABLET command with my digitizer

This problem is unique with AutoCAD for Windows. Because it uses the standard Windows mouse driver, it thinks that your digitizer is actually a mouse (which cannot be used as digitizer). The digitizers in the CADLAB are all Summasketch MM1201 digitizers, and AutoCAD sometimes needs to be told that that is what you are using. The command to do this is CONFIG. Once in config mode, you will need to tell AutoCAD that you are using this digitizer as your pointing device. Configuring the digitizer is option 4 from the CONFIG menu.


What do I do with a ZIP file I have downloaded?

ZIP files will have a ZIP extension (i.e. smada.zip), before they can be used they must be unzipped. There is a software utility to do this called pkunzip (pkunzip.exe), this software is best placed in the DOS directory of your machine. By putting it in your DOS directory you insure that is accessible whenever you need it. The commands to unzip a zip file is;

pkunzip filename

Do not include the ZIP extension on the command. The file will be unzipped into the current directory. Zipping and Unzipping can also be made easy using a Windows program called Winzip which can be downloaded from www.winzip.com