To create custom dialog boxes, VectorScript utilizes a “layout manager” which handles all the details of positioning and sizing of controls. If you have written custom dialog boxes using previous versions of VectorWorks or MiniCAD, you know that the dialog box was treated as a canvas, where dialog box controls were created and positioned using absolute coordinates. This was often a tedious process, and dialog boxes created on one platform often did not transfer to other platforms without significant adjustment. Modern custom dialog boxes in VectorScript treat the dialog box as a container for the components of the dialog box. Using this methodology allows the details of control sizing and positioning to be handled by the application and results in dialog boxes which are consistent across platforms and easier to create.
Modern custom dialog boxes are created in two stages. In the first stage, controls are added to the dialog box container; this usually involves a series of control definition function calls which specify the controls to be displayed along with their default properties. Once all the controls for a dialog box have been added to the container, they are organized for final on screen display.
Organizing controls in modern custom dialog boxes is radically different from the old canvas method in older versions. Controls are arranged by specifying their position relative to other controls, rather than specifying their exact location.