Life after/beyond PowerCadd?

[poolvibe]

Hoping for some sort of update on progress soon.....

[Alfred Scott]

There has never been any consideration of making PowerCADD into a 3D modeling program, however we do have the ability to have a Z height in a drawing. This is used in TopoTools:

http://www.seqair.com/WildTools/TopoToo ... Tools.html

http://www.seqair.com/WildTools/TopoToo ... ofile.html

where Analyze Topo, Find Contours... from the Tool menu

http://www.seqair.com/WildTools/TopoToo ... eTopo.html

In the preview of the dialog, you have a choice of viewing the topography with a 2D or 3D view.

In the case of the 3D view, you have familiar tools for moving around the view.

I suspect many of you may not be aware of this capability.

From the Export menu, choose OpenClip:Copy Contours or OpenClip:Copy 3D Surfaces to copy the three dimensional objects to FormZ or any other program that supports the OpenClip format.

Analyze Slope calculates slopes for a terrain represented by all visible Topo Point objects and reference points with a Z height in the drawing.

Alfred

[poolvibe]

I commend your work Alfred but I can't really do anything with it if I can't run PC.

[Alfred Scott]

Frank,

Right now I’d settle for getting my own brain working right!

It may sound like a little thing, but I’m changing the Thicken tool to produce Beziers instead of polygons. Visually the result looks the same but there are dramatically fewer points. It seems to take a full week for each little project I take on.

While there are only a handful of new tools, there have been huge changes within WildTools. Recently I had to download the current shipping version of WildTools and it was shocking for me to see.

Alfred

[poolvibe]

Sounds amazing. Wish I could run it on my Mac.

[pjmeli]

I would just like PowerCadd to run at all on my new computer.

I read that VMWare for M1 Macs will be available around July-August
Also I think Parallels already does support M1's

I believe you can still download the Mojave installer…I did a few months ago myself.

Regards
Paul

[poolvibe]

Hopefully VMware works but there is little hope Mojave will run. So far all OS’s are ARM versions

[S. Shubin]

Hello PC/WT folk

For some reason I have been reading the forum for the last couple days and I just happened upon Todd’s notice of PowerCADD no longer being developed

I started with PowerCADD sometime back in the early 80s. Many years ago ( I think in the early 90’s) I saw Bill Stanley and his wife in Anaheim California at some type of architecture and engineering tradeshow. I can’t remember who was running that particular show

I used to go by the Design Community (was that the name?) forum screen name of Howgoesit.

Anyway, I retired numerous years ago. But recently, I decided to do a remodel on the house here and so I thought I better get a current version of a CAD program that’ll work with a new plotter as my old HP DesignJet 250 C was broke

Before buying any CAD software, I decided to go to this forum and see if PowerCADD was set up for 64-bit yet. I saw that it wasn’t and so I decided to try another 2D CAD program

Many years ago while I was still using PowerCADD on a regular basis, I happened on a program called HIGHDESIGN. I figured it was good to be familiar with other software, just in case something happened to what I was using (PowerCADD)

And at the time, there was a freeware version of HIGHDESIGN. So I downloaded it and played with it. And I found it to be quite intuitive. Not anywhere as powerful as PowerCADD with Wild Tools, but nonetheless, it did seem to be a pretty straightforward program that was easy to get up and going with

I liked the way the interface worked — and to me, that’s extremely important that the interface not fight against you but rather work with you

So not too long ago when I decided I’m gonna need something for this remodel here at the house, I decided to give HighDesign Pro a go.

It’s a program that has been around for a long time. I believe they’re centered out of Italy although they have places here in the states that sell it. But I happened to get my version at the Mac App Store which I like, because it made the installation and the update to version R6 as easy as pie

I’ve contacted tech support via email maybe three or four times and they’ve gotten back to me pretty fast I would say so I’m happy with that and they answered my questions exactly as I needed. It was easy to understand what was being said and what I had to do

The program has some very good features that I like. They do have viewports that you could set up in LAYOUT — which is I guess like paper space in AutoCAD. So any layout can have numerous viewports. And each viewport can have its own scale. And it’s easy to set it up that way and easy to position the viewports wherever you want them on the page

They have sheets and they have details. And you could import any of these sheets into a viewport on a layout. And it’s no big thing to do it.

And if you update let’s say a floor plan in one of your sheets, well it’ll automatically update in the viewport that is in your layout

Like every program there’s a learning stage. But I think if you stick with the program I think a lot of you will like it.

And I’d be willing to even wager that you’re probably going to be able to learn a program like this a whole lot faster than vectorworks or some other multi thousand dollar BIM program

Now another big reason why I decided to go with HIGHDESIGN is I didn’t feel like spending thousands of dollars on a CAD package especially not where I’m at in life right now. But I do feel that this program is pretty doggone good and I think a lot of you that are using PowerCADD should consider it because it’s only a few hundred dollars as opposed to thousands of dollars

By the way I don’t have any connection at all with ILEXSOFT which is the guys that make HighDesign. I’ve never met any of the iLexsoft people. I’ve never spoken with any of the people from ILEXSOFT. They are not my friends. They’re not even a friend of a friend. I have absolutely no relationship with them. I don’t get any money for you guys looking at or installing the package. I’m just an old PowerCadd user that was looking for something to replace PowerCadd and that’s it

So if nothing else go over to the Mac App Store and take a look. And I’m sure you could go to ilexsoft.com and have a look that way too

Steve

[RTCool]

Interesting. I hadn't heard of it till now.

[PeterKona]

I started out with PowerDraw around 1988 with a Mac SE and though I trained in AutoCAD, I've stuck with PowerCADD ever since. It served me working in different circumstances and projects. It was never a barrier to fit in with the AutoDesk predominance.... Residential,multi-family, commercial, hospitality, and light industrial. Besides my own work I'm now working for an architect also using PowerCADD putting out large (LARGE) residential projects. We're perfectly happy with it but the writing is on the wall. Both of us are grateful ... yet we'll possibly both retire along with PowerCADD.

I actually can't fully express how big PowerCADD and Wildtools have been in my life. I feel it is partly because of the people who created this great tool and a how they dedicated themselves to it. But it worked and worked (harder than me, I can guarantee.)

"HighDesign" sounds familiar, but I haven't tried it.

S. Shubin--Design Community, if I get your reference correct, was the web presence of Great Buildings Online and DesignWorks by Kevin Matthews, that could have been a counterpart to PowerCADD before SketchUp. As I recall from MacWorld, DW and PC were intimate in the old days, and Kevin hosted the PowerCADD forum for a long time. ( I had a separate connection with Kevin through totally different acquaintances, which is one of the cool coincidences in life.)

SketchUp and PowerCADD are natural together. Just needed more integration. That's the name of the game for me until it runs out.