Other Uses of Property Managers

The Properties palette uses IPropertyManager and IDynamicProperty not only for properties of objects, but also for displaying properties of commands and of the current space. For example, when no object is selected in the drawing, the Properties palette displays properties relating to the UCS. Also, certain commands use the Properties palette to display property information (such as the 3DORBIT command). These situations require defining special property managers for these specific “modes.” Getting the property managers for the modes requires a slightly different mechanism than the procedure for getting the property managers for selectable objects. As mentioned earlier for properties of objects, there is a protocol extension for each class of object. This protocol extension object can be used by the developer to get the property manager and add its property classes. For modal situations, the developer can use a set of predefined protocol extensions on the database to retrieve the property manager for that modal situation.