138 — The Tutorial button¶

The Tutorial button opens ConstructiVision’s Interactive Tutorial: fourteen cards that walk the whole job, from starting a project to plotting the panel book. Each card explains one step in plain trade terms: sizing a panel, cutting openings, placing embeds, rigging it to lift, laying out the site and the casting yard, and printing the book.

Some cards only explain. Others, marked DEMO, offer to open the real dialog filled in with the tutorial’s own values, so you can see what a finished entry looks like. This lesson shows how to open the tutorial, how to read every card without changing anything, and what each card covers.

Where it is¶

Toolbar: ConstructiVision Site & Tools, the Tutorial button. Its tooltip reads Tutorial. It sits after Up-Convert Panel and a separator, just before Color Theme.
Menu: ConstructiVision → Tutorial…. The menu’s help line reads: “Interactive See-Do-Teach tutorial: build a 6-panel tilt-up building, site + cast layout, and a panel book.”
Typed command: CV-TUTORIAL.
If ConstructiVision has not been loaded yet in this AutoCAD session, the button loads it first and then opens the tutorial.

The run this lesson is based on opened the tutorial over a new drawing made from ConstructiVision’s own panel template.

Try it on a new drawing¶

The tutorial does not use a corpus drawing. It names its own example: a project with the panel prefix TUT, and a first panel, TUT001. The steps below read every card without running any of them, which is how it was run on a published build.

Start a new drawing.
On the ConstructiVision Site & Tools toolbar, click Tutorial. The command line shows:
```
[CV-TUT] ConstructiVision tutorial started.
```
The ConstructiVision - Interactive Tutorial dialog opens on Step 1 of 14 Welcome to ConstructiVision, tagged INTRO at the right. The card’s text fills the box in the middle, and five buttons sit along the bottom: Redo, Skip, < Back, Next > and Quit. Next > is the outlined default button.
Read the card. It ends: “Use Next / Back / Redo / Skip / Quit. Click Next to begin.”
Click Skip. The dialog moves to Step 2 of 14 The ConstructiVision menu. Skip moves one card forward and runs nothing.

Keep clicking Skip. At Step 5 of 14 Openings (doors & windows), tagged DEMO, the card reads:

Real panels have holes. From the feature menu you can add:

   Man Door ......... a walk-through door (width, height, swing)
   Standard Opening . a window
   Rough Opening .... a conduit or chase
   Dock Leveler ..... a loading-dock recess

Each opening asks for SIZE, ELEVATION (height off the floor),
and DISTANCE from a reference edge (Left or Right).

>>> Click NEXT to OPEN the Man Door dialog. Add a door
    3'-0" wide x 7'-0" tall, 2'-0" from the left. <<<

The lines starting >>> tell you what Next would do on this card. Skip leaves the Man Door dialog closed.

Skip on through to Step 14 of 14 You’re ready, tagged INTRO. It sums up the six stages and ends: “Click Quit to close the tutorial. Good luck!”
Click Quit. The dialog closes and the command line shows:
```
[CV-TUT] Tutorial exited.
```

Paging with Skip and closing with Quit opened no other dialog and used no licence token.

What you see¶

Every card has a heading (Step N of 14 and a title), a tag (INTRO or DEMO), and its text in the box. All fourteen cards fit their box: no line is cut off at the right edge, and no card needs scrolling.

Step	Card	Tag	What the card covers, and what it says Next will do
1	Welcome to ConstructiVision	INTRO	What you will build: wall panels, a site layout, a casting-yard layout and a plotted panel book. How the tutorial teaches: SEE, DO, TEACH.
2	The ConstructiVision menu	INTRO	The menu items you will use, and what a project is: “a folder of panel drawings that share a name prefix (e.g. TUT001, TUT002 …)”.
3	Start a New Project	DEMO	What Project Details holds (project name, job number and address, panel prefix, default thickness and concrete strength). Next: “CV opens the New Project dialog PRE-FILLED with the tutorial project. Review the fields, then click OK.”
4	Size the panel (Main Panel dialog)	DEMO	The four numbers that define the concrete outline: Width `20'-0"`, Height `24'-0"`, Thickness `8"`, Top shape `Flat`. Next: “CV seeds panel TUT001 and opens Main Panel PRE-FILLED with these values. Review, then click OK.”
5	Openings (doors & windows)	DEMO	Man Door, Standard Opening, Rough Opening, Dock Leveler (shown in full above). Next: open Man Door and add a `3'-0"` x `7'-0"` door, `2'-0"` from the left.
6	Weld connections & embeds	DEMO	Weld Connections, Pilasters/Lintels, Slab Dowels; single plates or an array along an edge. Next: “OPEN Weld Connections. Add a vertical array of 3 plates up the right edge.”
7	Ledgers, top plates & reveals	DEMO	Ledger, Top Plate, horizontal and vertical reveals, Chamfer. Next: “OPEN the Pilaster / Lintel dialog (one of this family). Add a pilaster, then close it.”
8	Blockouts & rigging	DEMO	Blockouts, Pick Points, Brace Points: “the RIGGING plan the field crew uses to stand the panel up safely.” Next: “OPEN Pick Points. Add 2 pick points near the top, then close it.”
9	Draw & finish the panel	DEMO	What CV draws when you click OK on a panel: the outline and dimensions, every feature on its own layer and color, the title block, weld schedule and logo. Next: “watch CV build panel TUT001 now.”
10	Site tilt-up layout	DEMO	The site: the building footprint with every panel in its final place. Route given: “ConstructiVision > New Drawing > Site, then Attach Panels.” No Next instruction on this card.
11	Casting-yard layout	DEMO	Panels poured flat: the layout “mirrors each panel face-down and nests them in the yard space”. No Next instruction on this card.
12	Plot the PANEL BOOK (PDF)	DEMO	One titled sheet per panel plus the site and cast sheets, as one PDF. Route given: “ConstructiVision > Batch Utilities > (select panels) > Plot”. No Next instruction on this card.
13	What’s next (roadmap)	INTRO	Features planned for later releases. Ends: “Re-run this tutorial any time from ConstructiVision > Tutorial.”
14	You’re ready	INTRO	The six stages (New Project, size and feature the panels, draw each panel, site layout, casting-yard layout, plot the panel book). Points you to “ConstructiVision > New Project” for your own building.

Skip, or Next?¶

Skip reads. It moves to the next card and does nothing else. Use it when you only want to read the tutorial.
Next acts on a DEMO card. Each card’s >>> line says what it does: open a dialog filled in with the tutorial’s values, or, on Step 9, build panel TUT001.
The Step 4 card says Next opens Main Panel. Main Panel’s footer line tells you whether clicking OK uses a licence token, for example 19 tokens - OK uses 1 on a panel that is not yet licensed, or Licensed - OK uses no token on one that is. Read that line before you click OK.

What this lesson does not cover¶

Running the DEMO steps. This lesson reads the cards. It does not show what happens when you click Next on a DEMO card, because that has not yet been recorded on a published build. If you click Next on Step 4, read Main Panel’s token line before you click OK.
The whole tutorial building. The menu’s help line says the tutorial builds a 6-panel tilt-up building. The cards name only the first panel, TUT001, and the site, casting-yard and panel-book cards (Steps 10 to 12) describe the menu route rather than offering a Next step. How many panels a full run produces has not been observed.
Known limits on the card path: none found. Earlier builds cut off lines at the right edge of the box (CV-3282). That was fixed in CV 12.17.149, and every line of all fourteen cards now fits.

Watch the lesson¶

A companion video for this lesson is planned alongside the written curriculum.