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New Features in Visual CADD 4:

  • MultiLine tool includes up to 16 lines drawn at once, each with settings for layer, color, linetype and linewidth. Sixteen different MultiLine Styles can be saved and then applied at any time.
  • Printing Presets let you save all Print settings to a style. With two mouse clicks you can then quickly change between different presets. A real time saver if you often print to different configurations or have more than one printer on your system.
  • Advanced Ortho gives you several options to set additional angles to use (beside the standard 0° ,90° ,180° , and 270° ) while drawing with ortho constrained.
  • Enhanced Scripting language: over 300 new native commands, covering all Visual CADD settings, help you automate your most frequent tasks.
  • Improved Generic CADD/AutoCAD import/export, including support for R2000 drawings.
  • Bearing Distance tools allow you to quickly develop site or plot plans by typing in coordinates on the status line, then selecting the generated entities to automatically place dimensions.
  • Preview window for File Open provides a view of a drawing without having to open it.
  • Full Preview for the Print command means that you can drag a large drawing in the preview window and precisely place a part of it to be printed.
  • Several new dimensioning enhancements, including the ability to set each dimension string with its own individual font.
  • Curved Leader and Datum commands.
  • Single Copy command allows you to quickly make a single copy of selected objects.
  • MultiBreak command can be used to break any number of entities at once.
  • Divide command will mark lines, arcs and circles into equal segments. You can elect to place points on the object, or to actually break it into separate objects of equal length.
  • LineScale command lets you control the scale of all nonsolid lines in a drawing.
  • Layer Groups now save the properties for layer, color, linetype and linewidth that are current when the Group is created. You have the option of applying these properties when you apply the Group, or leaving the current settings in the drawing current (the way v3 now works).
  • Redesigned Symbol Manager takes up less room in the drawing area and features several new enhancements.
  • Clean Data command removes 0 length entities that can sometimes cause drawing corruption.
  • Font Display in all Visual CADD dialogs can now be sorted: alphabetical, vector fonts at top of list, or TrueType fonts at top of list.
  • AutoSave your drawings at the interval you specify.
  • 100 new API calls to support the new features.
  • A whole bunch of bug fixes!

Detailed info on the top five features:

MultiLine – instead of drawing one line at a time, you can set up MultiLine Styles and draw complete assemblies all at once. For instance, a MultiLine Style could be set up with 4 lines to draw a concrete wall in plan view, with two solid heavy lines for the wall, and two dashed lighter lines outside the solid lines, for the footing below the wall.

Printing Presets - In earlier versions of Visual CADD (and also most other CAD programs), if you want to print with a different configuration, each setting has to be manually changed every time. With Print Presets, you set options once, and then take a "snapshot" of those settings by creating a preset. Whenever the Print dialog is opened, a different preset can be chosen with a couple of mouse clicks. Presets are a real timesaver if you often change between different printers, paper size or orientation, and different drawing scales when printing your work.

Advanced Ortho – Normally when you draw with ortho mode on, lines are constrained to four 90° angles – 0 to the right, 90 up, 180 to the left and 270 down. If you want to draw a line at 45° , for example, you have to change the ortho angle before drawing anything. To get back to 0° you have to change ortho angle again.

With Advanced Ortho you specify additional angles without having to continually change ortho angle. For instance, set the step angle at 45° , and then when you start drawing a line, there are now 8 options: the four angles mentioned above, plus 45° to the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right .

You save a lot of time over the course of a day by not having to constantly call up a separate command to change the ortho angle.

Enhanced Scripting - The Visual CADD scripting language lets you string often used commands together. For instance, you could change the current drawing layer, color and linetype, set a new height and rotation for text, then start a text line to be placed in the drawing, all with one keystroke.

The problem is that in past versions, not all of the settings have been available for scripting. In v4, every setting in Visual CADD has been included; over 300 new native commands provide powerful new options. Some of the new scripting possibilities:

  • Change a MultiLine Style and run the MultiLine command with one keystroke.
  • Make a Print Preset current and then Print a drawing with one keystroke --without the print dialog appearing.
  • Create scripts to change one or several properties of dimensions –for instance text height and font, type and size of arrows, color of dimension and extension lines, with one keystroke.
  • Set a filter for one type of entity, select only those entities in a drawing, and change the layer, color, linetype and/or linewidth, with one keystroke.
  • Set a new background color and change the default tool with one keystroke. 
  • Switch to a Named View in the drawing with one keystroke.

Improved GCADD/ACAD conversion –Now supports R2000, the latest version of AutoCAD. The biggest new feature is more control over color and font mapping during conversion between the ACAD and VCADD files. You can now create custom color maps and font maps and save them for later use. Maps are included for AutoCAD Windows colors.

  • now properly save tolerances to DWG.
  • entities with extrusions are imported instead of being dropped.
  • 3D entities are imported.
  • layers/linetypes embedded in symbols are now imported.
  • color mapping tables for more accurate color matching between DWG and VCD files.
  • hatches are being imported as hatches.
  • enhanced font mapping not limited to 8 character font names.
  • font map now support more than 32 entries.
  • increased line type conversion accuracy.
  • proper attributes visibility conversion.
  • conversion error reporting for easier tracking of conversion problems and resolution.
  • leader and MTEXT conversion added.