A few thoughts about PowerCADD8

[David Scott]

I've been using PowerCADD8 for a couple of months now (new Intel machines at last!) and here are a few observations:

Installation: Big rigmarole, but I guess that's the price of preventing boot-legging. My biggest issue was with standard non-admin users. Changing access rights to the Network folder had to be done by hand. Our corporate firewall blocks a lot of the communications to EngSW too, so I don't know what works and what doesn't. The update process doesn't work through our firewall either.

Speed: big improvement here, and very welcome. I'm curious about the fast draw mode. Why did it disappear in the 8.1.2 update? Did anyone use it? For me it was a great demo but not really practical. The drop in visual quality just felt wrong when actually drawing. How about this?: make it work ONLY when scroll zooming, and automatically switch back to high quality view when drawing. I guarantee everyone would use it then.

Multi-Stationery: Great addition- fixed the old multiple copies problem.

Scaling line thickness when pasting: brilliant.

Text: I like the additions and improvements (system-wide dictionary- yey!) to the text tool, but I have to say I miss the ruler appearing at the top of the text block within the drawing when editing text. It made it visually easier to add tabs etc and you could see the live changes in the drawing itself and how the text related to other elements within the drawing. Is there any way I can get that back?

Ghost images when mirroring: I love this feature, especially when doing a perpendicular mirror off a line. The visual feedback when using the WildTools attach tool is great too, and the extra trick for multiple attach is fantastic.

WildTools Parallel Offset tools: The offset value appearing on-screen is great, but there are too many zeros when using metric values. The tool should obey the settings for "display accuracy specified".

Toolbar: I have to confess most of the items I find it easier to use keyboard shortcuts, but having the Drawing Scale, items selected, and nudge, up there is very handy.

Dashes: definitely needs an update to give more detailed control over creating dash types. The method is very 1990s.

Date & Time Stamp: For some reason my older drawings now display the time as well as the date- when it should have just been the date, so I have to change that when opening older drawings. I use this feature in a "date printed" box on every drawing: so it 'freezes' the date into the print or PDF.

DWG files: Big improvements here. Really appreciated.

I see the Status window is still there (despite the release notes) but changing the drawing scale has to be done through the Drawing Setup… menu pane. This has been confusing for some of our users.

All in all we are really glad we did the update. The speed improvements alone with intel machines were worth it, and the extra visual feedback when drawing is a really nice bonus. I'm sure there are lots of other touches that will come out as we progress too, so thanks everyone at EngSW (& Alfred) for the great work.

David

PS Is it not time to fully integrate WildTools? For new users it's a bit confusing with a lot of duplication, and it feels a little bit like a race to improve tools. Yes I know I can create my own toolset with the best of both, but marketing both as PowerCADD Expert makes it sound like it's all integrated. How about Alfred joining the company and merging the toolboxes with one set of fantastic tools?

[Alfred Scott]

David,

The 'Fast Drawing Mode' meant that the whole drawing was drawn using OpenGL, which is fast as blazes but has many limitations and drawbacks. It's not possible to switch between drawing modes (Quartz vs OpenGL) on the fly.

The problem with too many zeros is something I've fixed and will be in a future update.

Alfred

[Derek]

[GaryV]