What features would you like to see added to a future version of DataCAD?
#70324 by joshhuggins
Thu Dec 01, 2016 1:27 pm
I went thru my past wish lists & weeded out some of the fluff and brought the better ones (imho) over here as a bump for v19. It was pretty impressive to see how many wishes had been fulfilled since around v.12! Big thanks Dave & crew for adding so many of our ideas into our favorite software :!:

:idea: Top Wish List Item: Scale File Expansion - Nuf said :wink: :idea:
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Misc. Past Wishes

:idea: Would love stamps that could be inserted into symbols, so when viewing the symbols from the drawing they would show the name of the symbols w/ corresponding path options like the existing File Name stamps have.
(Edit) This would be nice for Xrefs also! Maybe a toggle in the Attribute dialog to be self aware?

:idea: What if smart arrows could have a head and tail? The Arrow menu & Arrow properties dialog could have Head Style and Tail Style buttons/drop downs to set each.
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:idea: Move or Copy with Drag, that when we are prompted to click the point to drag from, that there was a By Center option in the menu that would pick the center of the selected entities like the S3 At Center in the clipboard select menu.

:idea: If you open a symbol from a drawing that it could use the current drawings printer settings vs. it always resetting to no printer setup. The
Code: Select all[Printer]
Settings Auto Load=
doesn't quite fit the bill for this.

:idea: If we could store light sources inside symbols. Having them be maybe a small piece of geometry or maybe just a point that would have light data stored in it's database/file. Each light point, hmm I like that name, could have the shader setting info stored in it. And maybe allow saving the shader settings to ini files so we can save light sources info to file to easily load them into these light points.

:idea: Tile-able SBF textures, with a scale adjustments like the materials have.

:idea: The ability to Change, More, Hatch, (all settings from Hatch Type Menu). This way we can apply hatch type settings independent of the hatch menu which forces you to set the correct hatch settings for each different hatch "type".

:idea: Multiple color translation files that we would be able to load at the import and export dialogs. Right now it's pretty straight forward to create/adjust the default.tbl using the DWG TrueView to view a clients ctb file and then adjust the translation table, the clincher is having to swap out the single tbl file each time, and keeping them stashed away in different folders. The swapping out of the default.tbl in the file system is a little much for some users. Maybe adding a path option \support files\Translation Tables?

Color Mapper
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Color Translation Export
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Color Translation Import
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:idea: I think I have a possible answer to a somewhat big wish we've had of being able to fill multiple attributes by filling out a single visible attribute in the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog. Right now when we set an attribute to Locked, it is hidden from the users view when using the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog and only reads information from the Value field, EVEN if you have the attribute set to use the Database linkage. If it could be tweaked so if Locked, & Database linkage is set to Field Filled By Lookup, that it would still hide the field in the Edit/Customize Symbol Attribute dialog, but display the data in the symbol according to the lookup. Seems like this should be an easy solution, I hope it is. Thanks!

:idea: When you make a selection using Fence in the Move or Copy commands (and other commands?) if when your Max Lines limit is passed it could show the boundary of the fence vs. the square extents box. It would help see the actual boundaries of the objects being selected better and help in locating things when not moving by specific points.

:idea: If we could set a different linetype and spacing for door swing arcs for both 2D & Smart Doors so we could have solid doors and then dashed swings.

:idea: A lil bumpin for an oldie wish of expandable toolbars.
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:idea: Another toolbar option that would help speed things up is if they showed all of their contents instead of the slow scrolling arrow that we have now when the toolbar drop down hits the vertical limits of the screen.
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:idea: When in the middle of adding entities to a clipboard set, that if we need to use Identify, it would not forget the previously selected entities when we right click out of Identify back to the Add To Set menu.

:idea: Ability to turn covers on or off for polylines via area. I know we can use the Polyline Edit menu to toggle covers on and off, but to be able to just do an area of a bunch of polylines and set all of their covers to on or off. There is no real way to view if the covers are on or off in Datacad, so having go back and forth between Datacad and a viewer check which ones you have covered can be tedious.

:idea: Export a drawing to DWG, in the export dialog if there was a check box that if a layer that contains a image file is exported, that the image file is copied to export location.

:idea: Linetype menus had implied match for things like Change, Linetype, (Implied Match) or Change, Spacing, Mask, Linetype, (Implied Match).

:idea: Ability to undo a GTV deletion.

:idea: Copy, Rect. / Circ. Array had a "Previous" option that would use the last used settings and number values.

:idea: This could just be added to the now existing Search and Replace tool. We have Datacad drawings spanning 20+ years. Back when linetypes were dependent on the dcadwin.lin file we would run into issues where linetypes would show up wrong because the difference in the dcadwin.lin files over time. Our fav was a grass linetype that showed up randomly as a clay tile. Now since v.11 we have had the great ability to create our own custom linetypes and escaped the hindrances of the dcadwin.lin file. Which has been really great, but one thing that is not really great is updating all of our old files with the new desired linetypes & spacings. So my wish would be that there could be a translation file like our DXF/DWG import where we could set peramiters and have it convert all of the drawings data. I know that currently we can simply use the change tool with mask, but with the v.12 Search and Replace tool now in the works I think having a way to save these mask settings and be albe to recall/reuse them easily and to preform multiple replacements at once would be very handy. The more smart entities, symbols with attributes we get the more important I can see it will be to be able to keep things upto date with changing standards, codes and just drawing practices in general. It "seems" the technology is pretty much in place and now expanding the UI a bit and allowing saved settings would be the next step I think. But I'm just a knuckle head wishing out loud again.
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:idea: If we could pick more than one Linetype in the mask tool like we can with the Entities & Colors. We don't use Weights here but maybe that should have multiple options for users who do use it?

:idea: A match option in the Change, Dims menus.

:idea: The new By Center option in the 3D Rotate options.
Neil Blanchard wrote:Would that be the center of all three dimensions, or just ortho to the screen?
Since we can only rotate by one axis at a time probably would be best to only use the currently selected axis I would think unless others can think of a better reason to use all of them. If the By Center button is sticky for all three axis, then it's one click to use it on all three axis as the different axis are selected from the menu. Just seems more straight forward to me. I think that's why we can only rotate one axis at a time, to help keep track of how things are being rotated, which my simple little mind appreciates. :wink:

:idea: In the Object Snap menu that F6 was a three way toggle. Off, Quadrant, & Octant. I often need snapping on curves at 45* for "stuff". No. Of Points Does not work for circles and I would prefer to keep No points set to 4 for things like lines, but for circles and curves at 8.

:idea: When using single line text with Center, Right, Middle or Top alignments that the text would type out (display) correctly when typing it, rather than when the text string is complete. Makes trying to type within limits and other alignments very hard.

:idea: Could we could import a layer set and be able to add a prefix or suffix to the layer names. This could save a lot of time creating custom layer groups which are based on a standard groups of layers.

:idea: When we go to edit a clipcube, if it's currently using a polyline clipcube, that it would already have F0 Polyline selected when entering the edit menu.

:idea: Be able to move an xclip independently of it's xref. Say you've preformed a complicated clip on an xref and the data being xref has been relocated in the original file, you have to recreate that complicated clip again now. If there was a way in the edit menu to move the clip and have it update the clips x/y/z point data by the selected amount would be great. Often being able to use a previous move distance would be ideal. Maybe it should be done in the regular Move menu as a toggle-able option, and in the mask menus?

:idea: If the Mask tool had a spacing option, maybe under Linetypes? I need to change a bunch of lines types drawn with an incorrect 3/32" spacing and would like to change only them to 6" spacing. They are on a bunch of different layers, linetypes etc, so selecting by spacing seems to be the way to go for this as far as I can tell.

:idea: I am really digging on the Pak-N-Go feature. It makes sending a file(s) off nice and quick, but I think it could use a few little tweaks.

- If the "pak" was in a more accessible format like .zip It would be nice to just be able to extract files using standard means without having to launch Datacad or even having it installed.
- A Pak-N-Go export to DWG option so we can quickly send outsiders files and take advantage of the nice file structuring and other Pak-N-Go features.

:idea: Wish M/PText had individual margins for Top, Bottom, Left & Right

:idea: What if the dynamic Shift/Ctrl flip/flops that we have when inserting symbols worked while doing a Move/Copy, Drag?

:idea: How about a find box / drop down for the PText and MText dialogs with a next/previous button? The drop down part would enable recalling the last say 10 searches.

:idea: An extended character codes to turn Fixed Reference Point off

:idea: I don't know if this would be possible, but it would be nice if the Status Area drop downs would jump when a letter is pressed. Say I drop down the linetype drop down, and I am at Circles, if the drop down is "dropped" and I hit G on the keyboard, it would jump to the first linetype that starts with a G, which is my case would be Grass. Like the font dialogs in most apps, Datacad included.

:idea: Make the Object Snap None option also turn off the More Option snaps (Fast Symbol, Fast 3D, Quick and SelSet). This might make the most sense since they are also snapping options, and when setting your snapping via a macro now this is used to clear the current settings.

:idea: Arrow and Dot options in the Non-Linear dimensions. Also the filled option in Angular is kind of cool. Seems arrows in general need to be the same through out all the dimension types if possible.

:idea: Database selection dialog box for symbol attributes showed both CSV and TXT files default. Having to switch to TXT every time is time consuming. I'm so lazy. :twisted:

:idea: When changing a dimension Scale Type to Arch or Inch/Frac. in the Dimension Properties dialog, that it would read the current setting for the Stacked Fractions from the drawing and use that setting instead of defaulting to off. Or an ini setting to set the default.

:idea: Longer names for symbol fields, currently limited to 14 characters.

:idea: Could we get an ini option so when inserting a symbol using Symbols Scale that the line factor option would disappear, and would be set based on the plot scale in the same manner as the XYZ enlargement values relative to the symbols original 1:1 size? We want to make sure that everything, including the line spacing gets scaled accordingly to the plot scale when using Symbol Scale. I couldn't think of a case where I would want to use symbol scale and have a different line factor than what would match the enlargement off the top of my head, but if someone can think of a reason, then maybe the ini option could not make the Line Factor disappear, but set the line factor to the corresponding factor each time the plot scale is changed, and then at insert the user could overwrite if needed.

:idea:
Mark Bell wrote:A small wishlist - when using dimensions/change text position allow the option to see the text rather than just the bounding box/outline as it will allow better placement of text/dims on the sheet in tight areas.

:idea: How about adding to the mask tools, an option to pick a specific symbol? Move, Mask, Entity, Symbol, Specific

:idea: If we could resize mutlitple MText all to the same point. Say Text, MText, Resize, Point, (pick a point), and then select via EGAFM to pick.
Image
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(I cleaned the schedule vertically before the screen shot to avoid confusion)

:idea:
Dave wrote:Smart Free Trim (or Smart Trim)
With a Smart free trim you could assume everything is selected.
Select Smart Free Trim
Select entities to trim

The only option required would be Layer Search
So just start free trim and then start selecting. I think this even make more sense to me.

:idea: Adding a Field Viewer to the Symbol Browser so when you hover your mouse over the symbol the field values display in the viewer.
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:idea: Could we get Symbol Attributes to allow a space as the last character without it getting chopped off? Helps when you need to add a character to help keep things centered using Fit and Aligned alignments for text.

:idea: In the Rotate menu could we get an option for 'By Insert Point' to rotate symbols by their insertion point.

:idea: So you know how we can open the properties and set the Enlargement factor for symbols and xrefs? Could we get a way in the Enlargement menu to directly set this enlargement value so we can apply a value to multiple entities (that support it) at once or sequentially via EGAFM? Maybe a single button that changes the way the F1-F4 Enlargement buttons work, direct factor vs. multiplying factor?

:idea: Could the Color Palette dialog have quick keys so when F1-S5 are typed it selects the corresponding color from the first 15 like the menu color selector does?
#70396 by joshhuggins
Fri Dec 09, 2016 7:37 pm
Could coincident entity detection be added to Tangents line selection? I had a symbol that had a line in it that i wanted to match the angle of so I traced a line over the line in the symbol so I could pick it for Tangents but it would only pick the symbol and never the line. I even tried moving the symbol to the back but that didn't work either. Had to move the line off the symbol then pick it.

Coincident entity detection would also be nice for Move, Drag as I couldn't pick the line to move it off either as it keep picking the symbol.

Or maybe symbols need to be reworked a bit for coincident entity detection? Either way, thanks!
#70444 by joshhuggins
Thu Dec 15, 2016 5:39 pm
I have been digging the drag and drop feature a lot and I just tried dragging and dropping a DLF layer file thinking it might trigger the Import Layer feature but alas it was a no-go. Could this be added?

Also, would really like an Add option in the Import menu so we can import layers as new layers instead of only being able to Replace or Merge with the existing active layer.
#70448 by David A. Giesselman
Fri Dec 16, 2016 3:42 pm
joshhuggins wrote:I have been digging the drag and drop feature a lot and I just tried dragging and dropping a DLF layer file thinking it might trigger the Import Layer feature but alas it was a no-go. Could this be added?

Also, would really like an Add option in the Import menu so we can import layers as new layers instead of only being able to Replace or Merge with the existing active layer.

Done & done for the next Subscription update.

Dave
#70449 by Roger D
Fri Dec 16, 2016 3:50 pm
You can import the layer as new when using the File/Import and select the layers.
The only issue currently is you can import layers with the same name, maybe Dave can start adding a number when a layer name is duplicate
Layer
Layer01
Layer02???
#70450 by joshhuggins
Fri Dec 16, 2016 4:57 pm
David A. Giesselman wrote:Done & done for the next Subscription update.
It's like Christmas all year long baby! Thanks!
#70451 by David A. Giesselman
Fri Dec 16, 2016 5:27 pm
Roger D wrote:You can import the layer as new when using the File/Import and select the layers.
The only issue currently is you can import layers with the same name, maybe Dave can start adding a number when a layer name is duplicate
Layer
Layer01
Layer02???

Working on this.

Dave
#70452 by Roger D
Fri Dec 16, 2016 7:25 pm
sounds like the old robot on Lost in Space, working, working.....
#70696 by joshhuggins
Wed Jan 25, 2017 6:54 pm
Would it be possible for Datacad to release the audit file after a repair is done running on a file? We get a file in use warning and have to close the drawing in order to open audit file and then reopen the drawing to compare things.
#70803 by joshhuggins
Mon Feb 13, 2017 7:50 pm
If it's not to hard to do, would it be possible to get the Message Bar to accept Ctrl+Enter as Enter also when it is displaying a text entry prompt? I have become so used to using Ctrl+Enter to close the MText dialogs (and other dialogs) I am now constantly hitting Ctrl+Enter to try to close the Message bars text entries also.
#70807 by David A. Giesselman
Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:36 pm
joshhuggins wrote:Would it be possible for Datacad to release the audit file after a repair is done running on a file? We get a file in use warning and have to close the drawing in order to open audit file and then reopen the drawing to compare things.

Done for the next update.

Dave
#70808 by David A. Giesselman
Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:37 pm
joshhuggins wrote:If it's not to hard to do, would it be possible to get the Message Bar to accept Ctrl+Enter as Enter also when it is displaying a text entry prompt? I have become so used to using Ctrl+Enter to close the MText dialogs (and other dialogs) I am now constantly hitting Ctrl+Enter to try to close the Message bars text entries also.

Done for the next Subscription update.

Dave
#70812 by joshhuggins
Tue Feb 14, 2017 4:36 pm
Thanks Boss!
#70932 by joshhuggins
Tue Mar 07, 2017 1:35 pm
Would it be possible to have the Batch Plot dialog show what pen table is currently set? Or better yet have it be a drop down list where we could change the pen table to be used?
#70957 by joshhuggins
Wed Mar 08, 2017 4:53 pm
Could Ctrl+Right Clicking on entities gain the ultra handy coincident selection function?

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