Page 1346 - Chief Architect Reference Manual

Viewing the Interactive Tutorial

Useful Expressions
Macro Description
The following are a few commonly used
expressions that you can use to obtain the owner Returns the selected publisher
attributes of one or more selected objects. selected Returns an array of multiple
selected publishers
referenced Returns the publishers
.names Preceded by owner, selected, or
referenced, this returns an array
of named values for the selected
publisher(s).
.<variable Preceded by owner, selected, or
_name> referenced, this returns the value
of the named value bounded by
the brackets for the selected pub-
lishers(s).
puts Returns a list instead of an array.
$ Indicates a global variable rather
than a local variable.

Viewing the Interactive Tutorial

An introductory tutorial is included with If you have previously run the tutorial during
Chief Architect and can be run in the Ruby the current program session, the tutorial will
Console. To run it, select Tools> Ruby open to the last topic shown. If you have not
run the tutorial this session, its Table of
Console , then click the Tutorial button
at the bottom of the dialog or simply type Contents will open.
show in the Input field. To view the tutorial’s Table of Contents at
any time, type toc in the Input field.

Working with Named Values

The Ruby Console can be used to access appear as the names of various attributes of
information about a variety of objects in the object such as its height or the presence
Chief Architect: information which can then of a special feature. Named Values use all
be used to create custom text macros and lower case characters and separate words
object labels. See “Text Macros” on page using an underscore _ instead of a space.
522.
Objects for which these Named Values are
This information is in the form of Named available in the Ruby Console are referred to
Values. In the Ruby Console, these values as NVPublishers, or just publishers.

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