PC8 / WT9 Assessments

[erikmar]

I've been advocating (pleading for?) PowerCADD referencing to be brought as close as possible to parity with that of the industry standard, AutoCAD, for several years now. There are a few preconditions for this to happen. All of the preconditions would be welcome additions in their own right, and would also act to bring PC into parity with the rest of the industry in those areas.

First, a rotatable coordinate system. In AutoCAD, this is called the UCS. Imagine a typical multifamily housing project, where the same unit plan might be repeated in multiple orientations throughout the project, and it will be self-evident why this is required.

Second, model space. In order to allow for precise placement of referenced files, there has to be a way to coordinate and control origin points across several files. Surveyors and civil engineers use AutoCAD's implementation of this all the time. I suspect model space may also be useful for controlling the differences in scale of referenced files, but maybe there's a way around this in a paperspace only application.

Neither of these changes would in any way impact PC's primary advantage over AutoCAD, namely the intuitive and elegant implementation of its drawing tools. Rather, they would improve the program where it's weak, and they would make PC once again a viable alternative for the many project types where repetition is an unavoidable evil.

[JTD]

After a few weeks my assessment is not really positive yet. I have been too busy to examine every feature and have not really had occassion to use the improved text handling (though that was the main draw for me) or the dwg interface. So my opinion may change once I use those features more.

Like some others, I sorely miss the status window as I change scales a lot; I find going to drawing setup a pain. Hopefully it will be a tad better as I discovered how the zoomer was interfering).

Also, I still find this does not work well with OSX spaces. I use dual monitors with tool palettes on one screen. Half the time, using spaces, when I return to the space PC is on, the palettes are missing and I have to cycle through spaces one or more times to get the palettes to appear. Again, too much of a pain, so I've turned off Spaces. (For what it's worth I had the same problem with 7.0.6; prior to that 7.0 would regularly crash, using Spaces).

[ftribel]

Erikmar : I fully agree with you. I want all that stuff of rotatable system, paper and model space, and have asked for years for it. As I work most of the time with surveyors files on whole districts with a lot of buildings, streets etc. I often lose a lot of time because of these absences. (and references too)

As with parallels and bootcamp we now can use Windows softwares, I'm wondering if it's not time to have a glance newly in direction of autocad. I watched someone working with it last month, and it was really fast and convenient...

Derek : I've sent a mail to ES, asking for a demo version, even international. Not even an answer.

[patrickm]

One of the new features of PC8 is Advanced Text. I had a PC7 file that I started working on in PC8. One of my PC7 Paragraph Text objects (with rulers, tabs, etc) didn't look right in PC8. If I selected the Text tool and clicked on the Paragraph Text, the format would clean itself up without me actually typing. If I then saved the document, the Paragraph Text alignment would be screwed up again the next time I opened the file.

I thought maybe I should dive into PC8's Advanced Text. I created an Advanced Text object, resized it to fit my space, copied and pasted my old text into it and formatted it. It worked perfectly.... until I printed it. I use various colors for various layers, so that I can easily identify which layer an object is on, then I print with the Layout>Drawing Setup>Print>"black and white" option, then I print PDF files which I send to the print shop and clients. Much to my surprise, the Advanced Text didn't print in black and white -- it retained the original layer color. The only way I could work around this is to change the text's pen color to black, which allowed it to print correctly (but gives no visual clues as to what layer it is on). I'd prefer that Advanced Text printed like all the other colored objects (i.e. black and white, not color or grayscale).

regards,
patrick

[fred johnson]

Erik, ftribel,
Be very careful what you wish for..vectorworks incorporated model space/paperspace viewports back in version 12 and, in my opinion, the latest version is more "autocad" than autocad. For me the added complexity in going the autocad route destroyed the reason why I perfered it over autocad in the first place. Yes, a rotatable orgin is a wanted feature and vw implementation of this is very good and pc should incorporate a variant of it. I would be very careful with the rest of the stuff though.

[erikmar]

Fred,
I agree that it's a risk to incorporate modelspace; if there's a way to implement robust referencing without having to go through modelspace, I'd be all for it, but I haven't seen any program do it yet, and it's not clear to me that it's possible. So it becomes a question of tradeoffs, and I for one would be willing to undergo a little more trouble with printing if I could have real referencing.
Your points are well taken, though, in that an acceptable (even desirable) tradeoff for me may not be for others.

[pbacot]

How about just a print area(s) function?

I have increasingly used print selection to be able to draw in open space and not in one of the pages (usually in the upper left). This requires manually making selection, and choosing PowerCADD / Print Selection for every time and every sheet I print, (sometimes missing a step and messing up the print).

To be able to print different portions of the drawing (a form of "port"), multiple print areas must be saved, possibly saved with some of the sheets. I've developed files using borders and masks for this. Such a simple system (not true ports) would require some of the same setup, but the print function could be simple "commad-p, return" again. A print scale saved with the print area would also be helpful.

OK I can use copyCat, but this is only a step/time savings on multiple print jobs, and takes setup.

[fred johnson]

Erik,
I think that the referencing features in the new vw is far superior to acad's x-refef capabilities; and anything can be "referenced" and become part of the file, even pfd's. Personaly I don't use this feature either in ac or vw, but with mutiple workers on different parts of a given project it seems to be the way to go. Also vw "viewports" of which there are two types, are not "scaleable" in the same sense as ac paperspace windows, as vw still has scale by layer. There is a certain amount of this sort of stuff that pc might perhaps benefit from implementing in some form without turning off the troops.

[ftribel]

[fred johnson]

. ftribel,
Let me get this straight.. take a section of your drawing, draw a rectangle roatated to the proper angle, print what is in the rectangle. On the print the rectangle is "normal" but the area inside of the rectangle is "rotated"?
or, using a rotatable print selection window you get the same effect.

VW has a feature which lets you move an outline of the selected sheet size relative to the drawing in lieu of a "print window" type command..if this feature were rotatable (which is currently is not) would'nt that achieve the same purpose. If one could, say, take a bordered sheet and turn that into an object that could be the "print selection" and rotatable and movable around the drawing with the same printed effect as noted above, would that be a feature worth investigating? Alfred has done some amazing things with WT which stay in the spirit of PC without having to resort to AC features. This approach, which I believe does not exist in any CAD program, may be possible and seems more PC-like.