forum.datacad.com

These are all great ideas and I would love to see them implemented, but how is Dave going to deliver parametrics to make DataCAD competitive if he spends all his time polishing the old program?

I hear ya Dick. I posted that same question to the beta team before, whether or not I should keep putting these kinds of ideas on the forum (might have been dbug back then),as it could be prolonging the parametrics, which is what I personally would like to move towards. I didn't really get a response, but figured Mark, Dave and team are smart enough to make the decisions on what the priorities are for their company, and I would keep throwing ideas out there and hope they get picked up along the way. Not many of my big wishes have made the cut, but I like to think they are on the big list. Somewhere below multiline / paragraph text!

I could point to a number of improvements that I believe have come from me, but I've lost track of them. I just remember when reading the What's New when they did something I was asking for. The most recent was a wish that you could access a template (now symbol browser folder) by clicking on the symbol and bringing up a menu like we could do with xref's. Voila.

There have been so many incremental improvements along the way that, when put together in a day's work, make a substantial contribution to productivity. So, I too trust Mark and Dave to know what to do and when. But I still don't see why I have to remember four different dimensions for inputting a 3-0 door depending on what reference and toggles are used. I trust that this will disappear with the advent of parametric doors. And then there's dynamic stretch and that problem with AddVertex or MoveVertex in the polygon editing not obeying the orthographic constriction.

Well I just had another hatchling. What if each symbol could self-contain a "piped" symbol or a bitmap, for it's display in the symbol browser? That is one thing I do miss from templates now and then.

Of course.... if the symbols could self-contain a bitmap for the symbol browser display, then our drawing files could contain their bitmap too, right? Just another pet-peeve of mine. Those external preview images are lame when compared to the insert symbol dialog box that can read the symbols directly. Of course previewing a drawing would be slower. So even if it still needs to be a bitmap preview, the bitmap should be stored internally for V12 IMHO. Again, just a pet-peeve that should be at the end of the to do list.

Even though I think that the parametrics will be awesome when it is fully implemented, I can see that as a HHHH-UUUU-GGGG-HHHH task to accomplish, and that it will be something that won't be seen for quite some time ... at least at a level where it is truely functional to most everyone.

An example... Just the coordination of taking part of a wall in plan and to then be able to automatically extract detailed section information from that, knowing that there are so many factors to take into account for how that wall might be detailed or how something specific to that project might have an impact, not to mention different company's ways of wanting to do things, would in itself be huge.

And everything MUST be customizable. I'm thinking that when it is implemented, there will still have to be a lot of time spent by everyone that uses it, to customize things in order to get the results they want.

I think that working on the parametrics is great, but would still like to see some of these other smaller improvements to the cad that I now use daily.

It's pretty simple to open Autocad blocks from manufactures, do a Close All, Save All, to get the information into individual AEC files quickly, but it's a pain to try to hunt through tons of AEC detail files, and save them to DSF symbols. It sure would be nice if in the new "symbol manager", we could batch convert AEC/DWG/DXF files in to DSF symbol files. This would allow for a lot more content to be accessible and managed from manufactures websites and alike.



I'd also like to see AEC and DSF to have the bitmaps save inside the files and be able to enable thumbnail views for these our file types in windows explorer, as there is not much room for management of these files from with in semi-limited dialog boxes in Datacad. I'd settle just Datacad being able to use embeded bitmaps though

Humbly Submitted for your approval

I'm sure it's some sort of backdoor work around, but it would be nice if we didn't have to use the non-standard Ctrl+E to use the clipboard features.

Just Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X would take us to the EGAFM menu with a Multiple toggle like all the other menus. If the Multiple was not toggled, then it prompts for the insert point if that toggle is set to on.

Just seems like that would make more sense, but again what do I know

I understand what your saying Miguel, but right now Ctrl+E is like a door way to the clipboard commands, which is an extra step. And once we are in that doorway, we select the entities that we want to edit, then we pick Copy or Cut, which is the command to preform. This is what seems backwards to how everything else works in Datacad. If Ctrl+C activates the copy command, and then we select entities that's one less step to get to the command, and the last step is picking our entities, like all the other basic Datacad commands.

If Ctrl+C/X could address the memory access issue directly (if that is the reason for Ctrl+E) then we could free up Ctrl+E for use somewhere else, match the Windows standards for Cut, Copy, Paste commands that are at the very root of the Windows OS, and make a tool that is so essential and powerful that much easier and standard. We have enough problems being different from everyone else as it is using Datacad JOGO

This wish idea is still hatching as I type so bare with me... & please forgive me Dave.

If we (gulp) could get some tie into the mathmatical funtions of Excel into say, symbol attributes, we could do some sweet stuff. First example, comes from a previous post where keynotes would increase by 1 as you continue to add them in sequential order. Say if we could create a symbol attribute with a value of:

=Sum(SymbolCount)+1

Or something like this to get the power of Excel's functions into symbol attributes. I know we've hear that xrefing of Excel files is coming, but having the option to tie our symbol attributes to the Excel funtions would be great. Just had some neat ideas brainstorming. Most have left me now since I've hashed this post over three times.

Could do it in a .INI file and add formulas that Datacad's built-in calculator could understand and the symbol attributes could address. Just would mean having to learn new codes to do the same thing that we do already in Excel. Using world know function commands and having a tie to the Excel program itself would be great, but would that leave those who use non-MS products out of the loop? Don't want to do that either I'd think.

Anywho just ramblings from your favorite nutcase

Great 'storm' Josh.

I hope Dave can put his nose outside of the bed in this snow stormy days at northeast area.

Your idea is wonderful. Hope the technical issues can be handled by our celebrated team of bits&bytes.

Thanks,
Miguel