PowerCADD Demo

Topic

The latest version of the PowerCADD Demo, which includes PowerCADD and PowerDWG, is available for Mac OS^? X.

Basic System Requirements for PowerCADD 7 Demo:

• a PowerPC / Power Macintosh G3, G4 or G5 computer
• at least 256MB (megabytes) of physical RAM^? installed is required for Mac OS X. We recommended 1 GB^? (gigabyte) of RAM for optional performance. MORE than 1GB of RAM may be required if you are running multiple applications in Mac OS X
• a CD-ROM drive
• a hard disk drive
• Mac OS 10.3 Panther or newer (Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger recommended)
• 160MB (megabytes) of free hard drive space for the PowerCADD application, documentation, related example files and related third party external add-on's
• optional: an output device and related software drivers of your choice which is Mac OS X compatible to print your drawings

Where to get the PowerCADD Demo

We encourage everyone to always take a test drive. We all do that when before we buy a new car or motorcycle and why should software be any different! In software speak -- download the demo Obviously we encourage new users to check things out before jumping on board with a new product. We also recommend veteran users download the PowerCADD demo and check things out first hand before upgrading or while you're waiting for your upgrade to arrive so you can get a leg up on things.

Caution: Current PowerCADD v6 users installing the PowerCADD v7 Demo should read this related Known Issues Article before installing and running the PowerCADD v7 Demo.

Remember to download the user manual too as it contains a lot of helpful information for new users. Veteran users should look for the new icon that flags over 100 new items in the latest version (yes, that's a new 'feature' in the manual and one we're pretty proud and fond of).

In Canada visit the PowerCADD Canada Demo Page for download links and instructions. Don't forget to download and review Chapter 2 of the PDF^? manual too!

In the United States and Other Countries visit Engineered Software's Demo Download Page Don't forget to download and review Chapter 2 of the PDF manual too!

If you're new to PowerCADD please take a moment to review the various topic areas in our PowerCADD Resources Center for some helpful hints and tips on getting started.

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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If you found this article or the website in general to be helpful, educational or a time and money saver you can show your support. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak

AutoCAD Convert & PowerCADD Demo Questions

Question

I'm an AutoCAD users evaluating the PowerCADD Demo and I have a few questions. Does PowerCADD support scripting? Can Sheet setups include changes to Layer Attributes such as Color? Can I can assign a line weight to a particular layer? Are there any read me files which explain the differences in approach between PowerCADD on the Mac and AutoCAD in Windows?

Requirements

Mimimun: PowerCADD Demo
Recommended: PowerCADD full version running in Mac OS^? X

Background & What To Do

Those are all excellent questions and observations, here a few general points to help in getting started:

Explain in a short document the new way to "think" or "draw" for Windows/autocad users

The latest version of the PowerCADD demo (and all full installations of PowerCADD) includes a copy of the manual in Acrobat PDF^? format. It's worth exploring Chapter Two as it covers some of the basic's which will be helpful in providing an overview to getting started. You should also review the PowerCADD Resources secton on this website as there are plenty of posts with text and demo movies describing numerous features and techniques of PowerCADD and how they work.

One of the primary differences/concepts of PowerCADD and the Mac OS is the paper paradigm. You draw 'to scale' on a preset sheet size in PowerCADD just like you did by hand. Don't be fooled by the elegant simplicity of that concept (again Chapter Two of the PDF manual discusses the steps).

Page Setup Demonstration [1.1MB]: A quick review of the Drawing Setup dialog and how to perform a Page Setup and choose a sheet size -- in this case up to 200 x 200 inches! The movie features menus and dialogs from PowerCADD v6 but the same process applies to the most recent version of PowerCADD.

Does PowerCADD support scripting?
While PowerCADD does support External Plug-in's, they require a high level of C programming knowledge and are not typically tackled by almost 100% of users. It's worth noting the Mac OS in general does have a feature called AppleScript which allows automation of many task but PowerCADD currently only supports a very basic AppleScript Dictionary so scripting within PowerCADD or using AppleScript to control PowerCADD isn't practical in a real world sense.

While scripting is currently not supported, it's very easy to assign key commands to any menu item or tool which may help in some instances. Assigning menu commands it is a point and click operation and explained well in the PDF manual included with both the demo and full versions of PowerCADD. You can also find discussions on assigning key commands in other articles here at caddpower.com

Can sheets have layer properties such as colors?

Sheet setups support layer order and layer status (on, off, dimmed), layer color, and layer opacity! Layers may contain various attributes which would apply to every object on the specified layer including color, locked or unlocked and scale. You can change the layer attributes of multiple selected layers quickly and easily to suit any specific drawing circumstances:

1. Select the layer( in the Layer Window
2. double click any selected layer, and the Layer Attributes dialog will open
3. Change the desired layer color to say 'red' and all selected layers will now use that specified color attribute. (The same holds true for other Layer Attributes such as locked/unlocked and layer scale.)

It's also worth mentioning one of the primary reasons to have layer colors in AutoCAD was/is for printed output. However, the Macintosh Operating System, and PowerCADD, support a WYSIWYG^? (What You See Is What You Get) environment. As such, it's very simple to assign a line weight to the objects on the screen and the printed output uses those specified line weights. The method is quite different from AutoCAD and we believe much more intuitive than what's used in AutoCAD (for completeness, we do note WYSIWYG line weights are becoming more popular in recent releases of ACad but it's currently not common place among most users and old habits die hard with respect to plotting techniques used from legacy versions of ACad)

You can click here to see a demonstration movie (300KB downnload) of how Layer Attributes can be assigned to multiple selected layers. In this demo movie, we pressed the Command key as we clicked on each layer as it allowed us to select layers at random (i.e. the layers were not all in the same order) ( need movie help?) The movie features menus and dialogs from PowerCADD v6 but the same process applies to the most recent version of PowerCADD.

Can I assign a line weight to a particular layer?
There is no method to assign a line weight attribute to a specific layer. However, given the nature of how PowerCADD and the Mac OS behave in general, there really isn't a need for one. One of the greatest strengths of PowerCADD (and the mac OS) is its WYSIWYG interface and the great deal of flexibility you have over working with objects and attributes regardless of layer.

For example, if all objects are on Layer 1, then you can simply:

1. perform a Select All (Choose Edit Menu -> Select ALL or press Command + A on the keyboard)
2. choose the desired line weight attribute from the Attr Menu -> Line -> 3 point (or whatever line weight you like) (alternatively, you can press Control+Click on one of the selected objects and choose the desired line weight from the Contextual menu)

The same technique will work for dash types, arrows, colors, line weights, fill patterns, etc. The visual feedback will be 'instant' which confirms the operation.

Essentially, PowerCADD will allow you to draw much as you did by hand in that you can put any object type on any layer with any attributes (i,e. a red 3 point line with dash type 3 can be on the same layer as a green 4 point line with dash type 5). There are several mechanisms to easily set tool attributes to make the transition fairly simple and it's made the transition for AutoCAD converts we've trained over the years fairly seamless.

Good luck, have fun, and don't hesitate to ask lots of questions.

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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If you found this article or the website in general to be helpful, educational or a time and money saver you can show your support. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak

File Loading Times

Question

PowerCADD seems to take a little longer to open files compared to other applications, why?

Requirements

PowerCADD demo or full version

Background

PowerCADD performs several types of error checking when opening files. This error checking is there to ensure the integrity of the drawing database and includes, among other things, checking for small objects which can cause problems with the file. There are also other factors outside of PowerCADD which can contribute to slow performance when opening a drawing including :

• type and amount of drawing content: for example drawings which make heavy use of Shadow Attributes can slow down opening times as the preview is built off screen before presenting the drawing window
• processor speed
• bus speed
• hard drive speed
• file fragmentation on the hard drive
• amount and type of Cache (e.g. L1 or L2 cache)
• applications which may be running the background (grabbing processor time)
• RAM^? fragmentation (particularly in OS^? 9 and to lesser degree in Mac OS X)
• excessive amounts of Virtual Memory allocated in OS 9
• the amount and type of RAM installed (relative to age/type of processor / system architecture)
• speed of video board processor and amount of VRAM^?

If files are being opened over a network then there are many other considerations which come into play ranging from how the network is configured to the type and configuration of the server and how many users are simultaneously accessing the server.

Another consideration is the type of data in the PowerCADD drawing, in particular when comparing loading speed with an AutoCAD file on a WinTel box. To generate a relative “head to head” comparison, the total file size needs to be considered and the types of objects in a file. An example would be a PowerCADD file containing raster graphics which will increase the loading time of a PowerCADD file. Translating the same AutoCAD drawing into PowerCADD, then performing a comparison may yield a closer relative comparison but factors noted earlier must also be considered.

Comparing PowerCADD drawing loading times to MS Excel or Word files is like comparing apples and oranges. The higher level object geometry contained in a PowerCADD file is more file overhead (larger file sizes) than basic text associated with an Excel or Word File^?. In this case, the physical difference in file size is likely enough to reflect a considerable difference in file loading times.

What To Do?

Nothing can be (nor should be) done to reduce the error checking PowerCADD performs and in the long term a few extra seconds in opening is offset in increased data safety and overall faster drawing production.

Opening a file which is in one contiguous location on a drive verses fragmented over multiple locations will not only decrease file loading times but also increase overall system performance. Running disk utilities such as Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro or Drive X (for OS X systems) to de fragmenting the hard drive can help (note we don't recommend Norton Utilities).

Mac OS X users may also find performance increases by running the Disk Utility Application : Repair Permissions routine. Problems with the Permissions File can adversely affect overall system performance including file loading times.

In both Mac OS X and OS 9.x systems, a system restart will address RAM fragmentation and can increase performance (decrease file load times). This is not unique to PowerCADD but rather is an OS level Memory Management issue.

Clearly faster processors, more cache, faster hard drives, faster bus speeds and other hardware improvements are more costly but can increase performance. Still, looking at simple systems maintenance such as hard drive de-fragmentation and RAM management are less expensive and easy methods to tweak any system.

We hope you found this helpful and if you're looking for more tips on how to tweak performance in PowerCADD 7 check out this section of our PowerCADD 7 Learning Center.

We hope that helps
caddpower.com

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If you found this article or the website in general to be helpful, educational or a time and money saver you can show your support. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak