introduction-long time powercadd user

[bsemonsen]

i am retired architect from ca. i was the first beta tester and user of powerdraw about 1985-86. i first got involved with bill through my use of a plotter driver bill made called powerplot. i had many phone conversations with bill about the powerplot which was using to plot drawings made with macdraw on a 1st generation mac. many times the conversation would turn to the need for a better drawing program. i don't remember the exact year but bill and susan flew to central ca. where i lived and bill watched for a couple days while i did hand drafting and macdraw drafting. when he left bill told me to expect a 400k disk in a couple weeks. over the~next year i received a new disk from fed-ex every 2 weeks and then bill and i would talk about the improvements, bob white was going through the same process. i am still using powercadd to this day. i am writing this because i want people to know how dedicated bill was and how good he was to work with as an enduser. i have beta tested for many companies over the years and bill is still the best i worked with, sketchup is second.
when development first started, would ask bill for a feature, he would ask me how i am going to use it and 2 weeks later i would get a disk that the feature was implemented better than i had asked. an example is the leader tool, i asked bill if he could let me put an arrow on a polygon line and then i could add text with text tool to the end of the line. the 400k disk came with what is now the leader tool. bill always tried to understand the need and then make it better than i asked.
sorry for the long windedness
bob semonsen

[Catterall]

Bob,

Nice to see there are some other longtime users out there. I've been using PowerDraw/PowerCADD since 1992. I left the firm I was with in LA to strike out on my own, but had no CAD skills. I went to a marketing event at Apple in Culver City where a local architect named Barry Isakson show the assembled architects and designers that drawings could be created using a Mac. I was sold and have been using PC ever since. My practice is commercial interiors and I used PC as a simple 2D drafting program.

Stephen Catterall

[patrickm]

Bob,

Nice to see there are some other longtime users out there. I've been using PowerDraw/PowerCADD since 1992. I left the firm I was with in LA to strike out on my own, but had no CAD skills. I went to a marketing event at Apple in Culver City where a local architect named Barry Isakson show the assembled architects and designers that drawings could be created using a Mac. I was sold and have been using PC ever since. My practice is commercial interiors and I used PC as a simple 2D drafting program.

Stephen Catterall

I was working for an architect in Corona del Mar at that same time, and also went to one of Barry's events at Apple in Culver City, which is what sold us. I remember marveling at how he could flip the door swing with a click of a button! That was a brave new world to me.