Topic Title

The following links should help you learning legacy DCAL

http://www.datacad.com/ddn/tutorial/dcal_tut.htm
http://www.datacad.com/ddn/dcal_ref.htm
http://www.datacad.com/ddn/source_discl.htm

The legacy DCAL compiler can be downloaded from the following link. The zip file contains folder information along with files. The zip file also includes sample source codes.
http://www.datacad.com/ddn/downloads/dcal.zip

The legacy DCAL exists in DataCAD so that users can still use the macro's they have purchased from 3rd party vendors.

The legacy DCAL was very limited. It would be at DataCAD first who add new functions for DCAL programmers so they can use them. The new functions would not work unless a new update is issued to the public and downloaded by users. Programmers could not create customized dialog boxes, or use 3rd party toolkits/modules to interpret the data. Now using Windows API or ActiveX controls you build macros that can read/write Word,Excel,DWG files or get the data from the Web or create any complex dialog box.The new DCAL needed to overcome these problems.

Legacy DCAL is single precision and thus causes rounding errors in decimal values when data moves between the macro and drawing file.

DC5 files were single precision and thus maximum size of the drawing gile could be 256MB. The new AEC file can be 1GB and thus legacy DCAL may cease to operate correctly for files over 256MB.

...The fact that a .DMX macro can work only if the main program is called precisely and nothing else than "DcadWin.exe" is , obviously, a serious obstacle to the diffusion and acceptance of Delphi-DCAL as a whole--forget the developers, here I'm looking at this from the ordinary user's point of view. Is there any provision in sight to overcome such a rigidity?
Pietro Moras

Hello Pietro,

I am sure that if you be in touch with Luigi Conti, at Microdata, he can provide you a full license of DataCAD 11, at a special price, to allow you make all tests you should need.
There is a special attention for developing DCAL solutions, and I am sure this will be improved as long as DCAL for Delphi is effectively released, with updated documents and general lines for its development.
Mark and Dave knows that DataCAD's future will be tied side-by-side with a full success of DCAL for Delphi.

Thanks,
Miguel

The hard-coded Dcadwin.exe was due to my lack of knowledge of the build names that are made available to public. This problem came into picture a couple of months ago and was logged as a Bug in the database. Today again after reading your message I decided to fix the problem and achieved success in doing so. Some changes had to be made which will require the building of macros again with newer version of Header files. No change in source code at your part will be required except the compilation with new libraries. I cannot tell you when the new version of these libraries will be available as it also requires all the flavors of DataCAD to be updated. All I can assure you that your coding methods will need no change.

First of all you should delete Dcadwin.exe from the 'DCAL for Delphi' folder and Rename your DcadDemo.exe to Dcadwin.exe. The only 1 ill effects that will happen is, your shortcut to Dcaddemo.exe will not work and need to be reassigned to Dcadwin.exe instead.

Dcadwin.exe works as a server to your client macro. Since the client macro currently looks for Dcadwin.exe (harcoded name), it cannot communicate with anything else. If under current system you do not want to rename your dcaddemo.exe, you can change Dcadwin.exe to Dcaddemo.exe in UInterfaces.pas and recompile your macro. This will cause macro to execute now with Dcaddemo.exe rather that dcadwin.exe because the client macro now looks for dcaddemo.exe.

Hope this helps and I am sorry for creating all the confusion.

Anyhow the real investment is not in money, it's in energy and time. Indeed to possibly become proficient in such an art, a serious and skilled programmer requires months, if not years. And faith.

Hello Pietro.

I agree with you 'in totum'. Even so, if you have available a full license (of DC 11 and 12, ASAP) you will make your learning curve & testing steps faster.

And I am also confident that DATACAD LLC will watch closer to the DCAL devepment efforts from now.

Good luck,
Miguel

...I've tried to get in touch with the largest European dealers (Microdata Sistemi s.r.l. in Italy, DataCAD Software & Services GmbH in Germany, DataCAD Software S.L. in Spain, ABACAD Informatique in France): no one of them has shown the slightest interest in discussing the potential of Delphi-DCAL.

I am sure that this is happening because there is not yet available an updated documentation with DCAL for Delphi.
As long as it is released we will have tools to entice applications developers, all around the CAD world, for developing utilities for DataCAD 11-12.
The general environment behind plain DCAL became older with the time, and wouldn't open perspectives for new developers.

You can remind Devinder's message:

...The legacy DCAL was very limited. It would be at DataCAD first who add new functions for DCAL programmers so they can use them. The new functions would not work unless a new update is issued to the public and downloaded by users. Programmers could not create customized dialog boxes, or use 3rd party toolkits/modules to interpret the data. Now using Windows API or ActiveX controls you build macros that can read/write Word,Excel,DWG files or get the data from the Web or create any complex dialog box.The new DCAL needed to overcome these problems.
Legacy DCAL is single precision and thus causes rounding errors in decimal values when data moves between the macro and drawing file.

Today we can foresee several opportunities in the peripherical DataCAD world, with topography/surveying, estimating, interior architecture, furniture manufacturing and assemblying ...
How many more areas can you imagine in a snap think ?

Thank you Pietro, for bringing discussion for this much important point.

Miguel

Hello Pietro,

Here is my first suggestion:

When you make a survey using a Geodesic GPS device you get the points from terrain, which are related with earth curvature, at latitude and longitude coordinates.

After the field job, the data are processed in office, to make the coordinate correction, transferring from Geodesic survey data into "topographic" data, taking into account the regional 'Geoid' standard.
An application supplied with the GPS device makes this calculus, and produces an ASCII file with the results, including X, Y and Z coordinates, correction factors (which ar all numerical values), and also the points identification (a text value). I can provide you samples of the ASCII files.

Your turn would be to create an automatic routine for importing data from this file, which would include the coordinated points with X, Y & Z, and the identification of each one of this points, carried from the field survey.

The points would be placed in separate layer from the 'text' data, and the text size should be handled in typical DataCAD way, with Text-Scale.

Please, don't consider it a challenge. This is not my point. I am sure that this feature would improve DataCAD value for current users which deals with topographic data from GPS surveys.

Future improvements could provide automatic contour (level) curves, dropped meshes over terrain, and perhaps more. May be with this improvements would be sold by a fair price.

Please, think about it.

Thanks,
Miguel

That's great Pietro. Good news.

Thanks,
Miguel