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Rolando
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 131
Location: Gainesville, Florida
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 Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 9:19 am Post subject: Going from Version 6 to Version 8 |
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Hi All,
I ended up skipping Version 7, so I'm going to be transitioning from V6 directly to V8. Any comments or suggestions as to what adjustments I might expect to have to make for not having the intermediate step of Version 7?
Did anyone else who is now using Version 8 also skip Version 7?
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Mac Pro, 9 Gig RAM,
OSX 10.5.4
Pcadd v8.0.2 |
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Howard
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Durham, NC
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:38 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I ended up skipping Version 7, so I'm going to be transitioning from V6 directly to V8. Any comments or suggestions as to what adjustments I might expect to have to make |
Haven't yet, but will be in same situation. Obviously, you probably need to keep both versions, so you can get some work done, as you are used to, while ramping up the learning curve. |
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Jeffrey Jakucyk
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 102
Location: Cincinnati, OH
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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I've been evaluating PC8 as our office of 18 people is still on PC6, but except for me and one other guinea pig everyone else is still on G5's running OS X 10.3. Due to several software and hardware upgrades that are sorely needed, we're going to have to move on to the next PowerCADD too. We're looking at upgrading to several new Intel machines, but not for the whole office, thus we would need to work in a mixed PC7/PC8 environment. So far my experience has been both encouraging and frustrating.
The good news is that PC8 is really fast and fluid. One of our test machines is the 24" 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, and PC8 just flies. I can't speak for older Intel Macs, but I'm impressed. It cranks out prints very quickly too.
One thing to watch out for is that PowerCADD 8 does not "Save As" PowerCADD 6 files, only PowerCADD 7. So you won't be able to "go back" once you save a file in PC8. Contact Engineered Software about getting a copy of PowerCADD 7 too, which shouldn't cost any extra, and which would let you convert back if you need to.
It also seems that while PC8 will import your old PC7 key commands, and PC7 will import your old PC6 key commands, PC8 will not import PC6 key commands.
The addition of shadows and transparency is really cool. Watch out with the shadows though, as they don't scale with objects as you might expect.
Advanced text in PC8 is very powerful, but as of yet there is no way to edit advanced text objects in PC7 or earlier. They show up as placed PDF objects in PC7 and PC6, so they display and print properly, but if there's a lot of them it can really bog down the program. This is a significant problem in a mixed PC7/PC8 office, since if you accidentally use advanced text you can't convert it back to regular. Even if you do remember, the regular text tool appears to have had all its formatting capabilities removed (i.e. the ruler where you could set tabs and indents and line returns and all that). The other stumbling block is that any DWG or DXF imported with PC8 will import the text objects as advanced text, so you're stuck.
Hatches are WAY faster, and you have many more options for altering them after the fact. However, existing hatches you have may not render or print properly. Any hatch that has an object along one of the "repeat boundaries" will have its line weight cut in half. It looks like you can work around it, but you need to watch out. Below is an image to illustrate. The object used to create the hatch is under the hatch itself. In PC6, the hatch on the right would be a bit slower due to the redundant overlapping lines, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with PC8.
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Rolando
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 131
Location: Gainesville, Florida
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Jeffrey Jakucyk wrote: | | Any hatch that has an object along one of the "repeat boundaries" will have its line weight cut in half. |
Thanks, Jeff. It's kind of disappointing that the line weight variation in hatches is still an issue. I noticed this in the trial version of 7 that I tried out right after V7 was issued. It was one of the the things that made me hesitate to upgrade. I use a lot of brick patterns in elevations and the rendering of those hatches in V7 wasn't acceptable.
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Mac Pro, 9 Gig RAM,
OSX 10.5.4
Pcadd v8.0.2 |
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Derek
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 568
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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If you plan to upgrade to PC8 from v7 or v6 but think there is a possibility you might need to go back to using one of the previous versions then may I suggest you use my Preference Utility before doing so.
For those who want to go from PC6 to PC8 (skipping v7), the next release of my utility may have a solution for your preferences. The next release has the ability to send saved copies of PowerCADD's preferences to others. Something I had not intended but should work would be to send your saved PC6 preferences to anyone with PC7 who could 'upgrade' them for you and return them as PC7 preferences. Then you could upgrade them to PC8.
I have not tested this theory but it can't hurt you to save your current preferences.
Derek
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Tool Palette Guide
PowerCADD Preference Utility |
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