Perference Settings

Question

Are there any PowerCADD 7 Preference settings that can I can adjust to help tweak performance?

Requirements

PowerCADD 7 and Mac OS^? X Tiger (10.4.4 or newer recommended)

Background

PowerCADD 7 is a high performance application optimized for Mac OS X. However, there is no way to predict the type of drawings everyone might be producing nor now new or old their hardware might be. With that in mind, there are a variety of perference settings in PowerCADD that may affect performance in your particular hardware or drawing situation. Note we say may affect performance; we really don't know but at least you can try various combinations of items to see if they actually make a difference for you.

For detailed explainations of the features and settings described below, reference your PowerCADD user manual.

What To Do

We can't guarantee anything -- but here are some things to try.

Preference Settings: General:
This feature allows floating windows in PowerCADD to become transparent, allowing you to see through them to the drawing below. Some computer hardware may not be sufficient to efficiently support this feature.

1. Choose PowerCADD menu > Preferences... > General Tab
2. Click on Window Fading to uncheck (turn off) that setting

Preference Settings: View:
There several settings in the View Preferences that you can try adjusting to affect performance. To turn any of these preferences off, do this:

1. Choose PowerCADD menu > Preferences... > View Tab
2. Click on check box next to a feature named below to uncheck (turn off) that setting

Some computer hardware may not be sufficient to efficiently support the following features:

• Uncheck the Use Transparent Drawing box. When checked on, objects with a solid fill or line pattern are transparent when dragging them on screen.
• Uncheck the Scale Patterns box. When checked on, fill patterns are scaled up or down when zooming in or out in a drawing. The performance of Fill Patterns is very fast and generally this feature doesn't affect performance to any measurable degree. However, as general rule we prefer to work with this perference off simply because patterns can look coarse on screen when zoomed in and they enlarge. Fill Patterns are also best viewed when the zoom level is set to View menu > Normal (100%) since that's the scale the pattern will print at.
• Uncheck the Mouse Wheel Zooms box. If you have a multi-button mouse with a center scroll wheel, when checked on you can use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of a drawing. If you're using a third party mouse or third party (non-Apple) mouse drivers (software used to make the mouse work), you should make sure you have the most current drivers available. The quality of the mouse driver can directly affect performance at the Mac OS System level which will also affect performance in PowerCADD
• Adjust the Greek Text setting for the Point size. This is also a settings that should be checked on to help performance. Greeking text renders the text to screen as a grey box when the display font size is equal to the value shown in the Greek Text field. Since Mac OS X performs anti-aliasing (smoothing) of text when rendered to screen, rendering the text as a grey box eliminates the need for the operating system to try and smooth the text display. Some computer hardware may not efficiently support Mac OS X level text smoothing. Try increasing the point size at which text will be greeked. Also check your font smoothing options in the Mac OS X System Panel (choose: Apple menu> System Preferences > Appearance and adjust the Font Smoothing Style pop-up setting and Turn off Text Smoothing for fonts sizes pop-up menu. You will need to experiment.)
• Uncheck the High Quality Drags (slower) box. This box is unchecked by default to help increase performance by simplifying the image redrawn to screen when objects are moved by dragging them in a drawing. Also reference our articles in the PowerCADD 7 : Interface section for more on this feature.

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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 by buying us coffee, lunch, or dinner. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak

Random Access Memory (RAM)

The amount of RAM^? installed in your computer can directly affect performance.

Just how much RAM should you have installed is quite a subjective matter as it depends on the type of work you do, how many documents and applications you have open at one time, what version of Mac OS^? X you're running and your type of hardware. While PowerCADD does an excellent job working the Apple's Mac OS X modern memory manager, having sufficient RAM installed is still important for general productivity.

Since the Apple Macintosh IIci and IIcx, there has been one rule of thumb we've always followed:

Take whatever Apple's current minimum recommendation is for RAM and double it when you buy your computer.

Now, that may seem like an extreme statement but history has proven time and again that rule of thumb to hold true. While it may seem high for what you think you're doing today it gives you some room to grow and grow quickly you will.

That rule of thumb will help you with PowerCADD and all your other Mac OS applications.

Minimum Recommended RAM for PowerCADD
The manual for PowerCADD 7 recommends a minimum of 1 Gigabyte (GB^?) of RAM be installed for optimal PowerCADD performance. That's a pretty reasonable recommendation but remember, that doesn't take into consideration other applications or widgets you may have running at the same time! So, take that recommendation with a grain of salt and look at your specific local needs. Start by looking at our rule of thumb noted above -- and adjust that value UP if you're not sure. More will always be better.

Type or Speed of RAM
We can't get into the details of that conversation here since the type of RAM and speed of RAM will vary depending on your current hardware. Suffice to say get the fastest and best possible quality RAM you can as it will make a difference.

Testing RAM
Yes, it's important you TEST your RAM before putting a computer into production. This isn't just a rule for using PowerCADD, but when using your Mac in general. RAM can be bad and bad RAM can produce all kinds of system level problems. Apple does provide a Hardware Test application and we recommend running in Loop Mode for at least 24 hours to thoroughly test your RAM before putting a machine into production. That recommendation also holds true if you've upgraded or added RAM.

Speeding up the Drawing Setup: Size Dialog

Question

When I perform a page setup for a new sheet size (File^? menu > Page Setup...) or change the sheet size in the Drawing Setup, Size Tab (Layout menu > Drawing Setup > Size) PowerCADD seems to be taking a long time to open the Drawing Setup Dialog box. Why does that happen and how can I improve performance?

Requirements

PowerCADD 6 or PowerCADD 7
PowerCADD 7 and Mac OS^? X Tiger or newer recommended

Background

PowerCADD version 6 and version 7 include a drawing preview feature when adjusting the Drawing Sheet size. The preview must be made before the dialog box can open and display its contents.

Depending on how complex the drawing is and what type of hardware you're using, the amount of time to build the preview will vary. That's why some drawings seem to exhibit the problem while others do not, and why the problem may not seem the same (or even be evident) on every computer.

The Drawing Setup: Size dialog is a drawing level (verses application level) preference setting. Therefore, you will see this condition every time you open the Drawing Setup: Size dialog or change printers and perform a Page Setup.

What To Do

The easiest way to increase performance is turn the preview feature off:

1. open a drawing
2. choose Layout menu > Drawing Setup > Size tab
3. Uncheck the Preview Drawing box
4. Press OK

(Note: these settings are remembered when the drawing is saved)

Now - each time you access the Drawing Setup: Size dialog (either directly or when it's forced open after changing printers and performing a Page Setup), the dialog will open faster because it does not have to build a preview.

The Preview Drawing settubg is dynamic so it can be turned on or of on-the-fly. For those rare times when you need to see the drawing preview, simply check the Preview Drawing box, make the desired setting changes, and uncheck the Preview Drawing box.

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 by buying us coffee, lunch, or dinner. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak

Video RAM

Video RAM^? affects performance overall in Mac OS^? X

With the introduction of Mac OS X several years ago, Apple also introduced their Quartz and Quartz Extreme technologies.

Apple has spelled out the system requirements for Video Boards and Video RAM in this article and it's worth reviewing. Because PowerCADD is optimized for Mac OS X, anything you can do to increase the overall performance of Mac OS X, including video board performance will help.

Hardware support for Quartz Extreme graphics becomes even more important in PowerCADD 7 if you start to use the new shadow and opacity attribute features.

To check the type of Video Board and amount of Video RAM you have installed on your computer:

1. From any application, choose Apple menu > About this Mac
2. The About This Mac dialog will open. Click More Info...
3. Apple's System Profiler application will present a dialog allowing you to access information about your computers hardware and software configuration
4. click the Hardware reveal triangle in the left hand Contents panel to display the list of hardware items for your computer
5. click Graphics/Displays to view the details of your computers Video Board including the make and model of the video board, amount of VRAM^? and various other hardware specifications
6. compare the hardware configuration to those recommended by Apple in the links provided earlier in this article

Aside from physically changing the video board, there is little that you can do increase compatibility with Quartz or Quartz Extreme. However, knowing what you have installed is an important first step to help determine where you may have a performance bottle neck that might be affecting your screen redraw or display performance in PowerCADD and other Mac OS X native applications.

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

View Menu Items :: PowerCADD7

Question

Are there any performance suggestions you can make for PowerCADD 7? I've noticed there is a delay when I have drawings that contain lots of objects with Transparency^? and Shadow attributes.

Requirements:

PowerCADD v7 and Mac OS^? X (10.4.4) or newer recommended

Background

PowerCADD 7 is a high performance application optimized for Mac OS X. However, there is no way to predict the type of drawings everyone might be producing nor now new or old their hardware might be. With that in mind, there are a variety of View menu items settings in PowerCADD that may affect performance in your particular hardware or drawing situation. Note we say may affect performance; we really don't know but at least you can try various combinations of items to see if they actually make a difference for you.

For detailed explainations of the features and settings described below, reference your PowerCADD user manual.

What To Do

We can't guarantee anything -- but here are some things to try.

The View Menu has specific items which allow you to turn off certain types of objects in a drawing. In addition to making it easier to work on a drawing by removing visual distractions, turning off some of these items can also increase performance.

Choosing any of the following items from the View Menu will turn the designated items off or on in a drawing. The display in the View Menu will update when an item is hidden. For example, if you choose Hide Text, the status of the View Menu will change to Show Text.

• Hide Text hides all the text in a drawing.
• Hide Dimensions hides all of the dimension lines and dimension text in a drawing.
• Hide Hatches hides all of the hatches in a drawing.
• Hide Transparency makes all transparent objects in a drawing opaque.
• Hide Shadows hides all shadows in a drawing.

Note: The redraw performance of Hatch patterns has been significantly increased in PowerCADD 7.

We strongly recommend assigning a custom key command to Hide Transparency and Hide Shadows (the custom key command will toggle the item between the menu Hide/Show state). Even on a 2 Ghz dual processor PowerMac G5 tower, with 64MB of VRAM^? and 3 GB^? of RAM, there can be a measurable delay when opening or editing files that contain large number of objects with Shadow and Transparency attributes. Shadow Attributes in particular can be a significant performance draw during redraw. A custom key command (choose: PowerCADD menu > Preferences > Commands tab) will go a long way to making switching these features on and off on the fly second nature. Trust us: we use a LOT of these two attributes and have learned alot during Alpha and Beta testing of PowerCADD 7 over the past two years prior to release!

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 by buying us coffee, lunch, or dinner. Thank you ~ Brian (huc) Huculak