A group of about 25 folks put off the inevitable heartbreak of the Red Sox on this evening to first attend to something that will be a much more productive use of time, a preview of DataCAD 11. After introductions went round the room, Evan Shu reminded folks to register for Build Boston and the real Broadway debut of DataCAD 11 set for November 19 in the amphitheater at DBUG’s 16th anniversary meeting. Evan also noted the forms required for either AIA or Mass Continuing Education credits.

Chairman and CEO of DATACAD LLC, Mark Madura, and Senior VP & Chief Technology Officer, Dave Giesselman, were on hand to show off the latest release candidate. In a bit of a surprise, they announced that DataCAD 11 would be ready for release by the time of the Build Boston meeting.

Mike Smith and Neil Blanchard took very excellent meeting notes and posted them to the DBUG forum, so rather than duplicate their fine efforts, you will find them reproduced here. — Evan H. Shu, FAIA

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From Mike Smith:

Comments from those at the DBUG meeting varied from positive to ecstatic. It is now a 32-bit program with double precision (64-bit) database accuracy (no more errors due to entities being “too far” from absolute zero), which will carry it far into the future.

[We] will get to that feature list, but the end result is that tentatively:

- DataCAD 11 will be mastered soon, and should be available for purchase in November (New Englanders, bring your credit cards and checks to Build Boston!).

- Upgrade prices (U.S. dollars) will be on par with previous releases (again, tentatively):
   - Registered owners of Plus: $195
   - 10 to 11: $295
   -  9 to 11:  395
   -  8 to 11:  695

- DataCAD 11 LT probably won’t be out until spring 2004

[Question: was there anything shown on parametric side of things?]

I don’t want to say any more or less than Mark told us last night. You will see no parametrics in the initial release. Now, stop moaning, dear Forum members:

The original .DC5 format would never support the future growth of DataCAD and parametrics. So they had to develop the new .AEC format (yes, that’s the new file format extension). DC 11 is a 64 bit program and has all the foundational programming in place to implement true parametrics. I have had the opportunity to test a dozen or so parametric objects in a DataCAD 11 beta test version, so I can assure you that they are there, and they do work.

The general plan, according to Mark, is to release DC 11, then to release FREE updates to DC 11, adding parametrics and things like paragraph text (MTEXT in ACAD). So they are NOT planning to implement parametrics in a future version of DCAD; they will be coming to DataCAD 11.

That said, the feature set for the first release of DataCAD 11 is HUGE. This is not a trivial upgrade, even without the initial implementation of parametrics. That’s probably why you haven’t seen anyone (myself included) write it up here on the Forum: it would be a LONG list and require a LONG time to type.
                                                                                    — Michael Smith, Signature Architects, Inc.

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From Neil Blanchard:

I’ll try anyway...  :-)  Starting with the “biggies”; some of which you have already mentioned:

DataCAD 11’s database is 64bit, whereas up to DataCAD 10 has been 32bit.  What this means is there is a LOT smaller chance to get rounding errors, and a whole host of other benefits, too.  Very large 3D models (like several *miles* across!) will be possible without inaccuracies creeping in.

Symbol Browser — this is a replacement to the current Templates, though Templates are still there, too.  Simply put, the Symbol Browser opens a folder that contains symbols — and shows them to you in a grid.  NO MORE MESSING WITH PATHS, AND NO MORE BLANK TEMPLATES!  There are many powerful and flexible things that the SB can do on the fly, and it leaves the templates in the dust!

Symbols now have layers.  They can be exploded onto the current layer or onto their original layers, and if they don’t already exist, it creates them.

You can add (virtually?) unlimited fields to the symbol’s properties, and the symbol reports are *much* easier to get, now.

Symbols can now have text attributes — I didn’t even know what they were before last night, but they are really slick.

Symbols can be dropped onto polygons — so easy!

You can set the Z-Base and the Z-Height of each layer separately. Simple but huge.

You can access GTV’s within an XRef — wow!

You can rotate Clip Cubes on MSP sheets.

You can place a perspective view on an MSP sheet.

The entire program interface is familiar but modernized/updated and it quite a bit more flexible including tear-away/dockable.  Menu buttons can have 12 characters instead of 8, there are 2 user icon bars instead of 1, there is a Context Sensitive icon bar that can be set to change when you enter a menu, all the SWOTHLUDFB indicators are toggle buttons, etc., etc.  Things like the MultiWindows are resizable and can be put onto a second monitor. There is a TIN modeler (triangulated irregular network) for site models that can generate contours, do cut and fill calcs...

All files are purged when you close them, and an AEC file is compressed so that it is about 1/5 the size of an equivalent DC5.  You can also manually purge them if you want and it is much faster than a Layer Utility.

The file backup and recovery system is about 100 times more robust that we have now.  There are backups of backups, and there are optional “sessions” files that save a copy when you close a file.

It is “network aware” — if you try to open a file that someone else has already opened, it will tell you the user’s name, the computer’s name, and the date and time when they opened it.  You can open a read-only copy.

You can double-click on a AEC file and DataCAD will open it, even if it is already running.

From DataCAD 11’s open dialog, you can directly open DWG’s!

In addition to BMP and JPG, you can insert GIF, TIF, TGA, PNG, PCX, and PNG, and in addition to o2c, you can insert 3DS and STL files.

You can move MSP details from one sheet to another.

Text “remembers” it’s alignment — if you edit it, it automatically re-justifies itself on the original justification line.

There is a sectioning tool.  The resulting section is associated with the section line and can be updated.

3D Knife is now part of DataCAD.

You can use Mask “on the fly” via EGAF, or the Selection Sets are still there, too.

o2c textures and colors can now be done by *layer* or by color as it is now.

You can export Whip! files.

PDF’s can have layers; either the drawing’s layers or MSP details as layers.

If you open a file (just to look at it, say) and you do nothing to it — DataCAD 11 will NOT ask you to save changes; it will just close it.

The drawing previews are now PNG’s, which are a lot smaller than the BMP’s and they look better.

I’ve missed a bunch of other things (mostly “smaller” and sorta’ esoteric), but I’m sure you’ll start to get the idea...and with the further *free* enhancements, including parametrics and paragraph text, you can see why we were so tantalized at the DBUG meeting the other night!  And why we stayed into the early innings of game 7 of the ALCS...

                                                                                            - Neil Blanchard, Barriere Reeves Architects

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From Michael Smith:

OK. As long as Neil started it :-), I’ll add a little more from the DBUG meeting.

> Symbols can now have text attributes — I didn’t even know what they
> were before last night, but they are really slick.

For those of you who might not know exactly what that means, here are three examples:

1. You get a .DWG file and read it into DataCAD 10. All the room numbers are contained in a box, which is a symbol. But there are no room numbers in the symbol; they are blank. ACAD allows a text to be placed in the symbol and changed without first exploding the symbol. You read that same .DWG file into DataCAD 11 and all the room number text DOES show up.

2. You create your own room number symbol with this new “text attribute” in it. Now when you place that symbol into your own DCAD drawing you are prompted to for “Room No.?” (that prompt is created by you, and can be anything you want). Type in a room number. Keep doing this for all your rooms.

3. In example 2, all those symbols with text will display properly when exported to a .DWG file.

Room tags are a simplistic application for this feature, but I hope you get the idea.

> You can rotate Clip Cubes on MSP sheets.

So, of course, you can also rotate your drawing sheets containing clip cubes.

> There is a TIN modeler (triangulated irregular network) for site
> models that can generate contours, do cut and fill calcs...

If you’re familiar with Plus, then you are familiar with this feature. The Drop Mesh feature is good, but the TIN Modeler is AWESOME for site
models, conforming to all the irregularities of a true site. You can cut roads 6" into your site and the vertical curb faces are added. You can create a road that both cuts into your site, and rises above it, and the TIN modeler will even tell you the cut/fill quantities. Lots more in this tool, but those are some of them.

> You can move MSP details from one sheet to another.

Or copy them. And you can change the order of the MSP sheets. A small thing, but something that couldn’t be done before.

> PDF’s can have layers; either the drawing’s layers or MSP details as layers.

Note that only Adobe 6 supports layers.
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Here are a few more bullet items from the DBUG meeting:

- Shift-click to edit menu button names. If you like Toolbox or you like Macros, you can change it to either one.

- Your own Toolbars, or DataCAD’s, can be customized to have drop-down options. So instead of a toolbar icon just for the “Polyline” menu, you can add drop-down options for a Rectangle, Hexagon, Octagon, etc. Instead of one toolbar icon “Cleanup”, you could have a drop-down with
icons for any of the cleanup options. So this allows you to have fewer toolbars, with as many or more options available.

- If the entities of a symbol had materials assigned to them, those material assignments will stick. So if you creat a bunch of wood tables
with glass tops and brass trim, and those materials are assigned in the Rendering Settings dialog (formerly the Viewer/Shader Color Map dialog), and you save them as symbols, when you place them in any future drawing and view them in o2c, those materials will still be applied. The symbols-with-materials are portable to other computers IF the bitmaps are also sent with the symbols. If the other copy of DataCAD does not find the materials in the original path, it will look in the same folder that the symbols are located in.

- Custom color palettes are now saved with the drawing file.

- The Purge option that Neil described also has one other really nice feature. One of the options is called “Sheets”. It lists all the MSP
sheets in the current drawing. By clicking on one of the sheet names, all the layers that make up that entire sheet are selected. Now you can
use the “Save As” option in that dialog to create a new DataCAD .AEC file on the fly (without renaming or exiting the drawing you are in).
Before this option, to create a drawing that duplicated an MSP sheet you would have to go to each detail in MSP and write down the name of all the ON layers. Then you would go to the Layer Manager, turn on all those layers, and use Layer Utilty to get a drawing from all of that.

- When you import a 3DS, o2c or STL object into DataCAD, the objects will be broken down into new layers. The layers are created by each
different material assignment in the object. So if someone created the object with entities to be wood, glass, steel, seven colors of paint,
stucco, grass, wood siding, and asphalt shingles, layers will be created for each of those materials, making manipulation and rendering of those imported objects MUCH easier than in the past.

- DCAD can export its 3D models to a .STL (stereo lithography) file format for use with things like 3D printers. Some good links:
     http://www.stereolithography.com/
     http://www.stereolithography.com/slainfo.php
     http://computer.howstuffworks.com/stereolith.htm
         (won’t show up in earlier versions of Netscape)
 
http://cybercut.berkeley.edu/mas2/html/processes/stereolith/more.html
     http://home.att.net/~castleisland/sla_int.htm
     http://www.zcorp.com/
         (supposedly these guys will make one free model for you!)

Mark also noted that there will be a free update for o2c Interactive! coming out soon after the release of DataCAD 11. No word on what it will include.  — Michael Smith, Signature Architects, Inc.