PowerCADD Direction
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:25 pm
Alfred’s forum posts and notes to beta testers regarding WildTools 10.6 have caused some confusion about the direction of Engineered Software and PowerCADD. This email/post is to clarify Engineered Software’s direction regarding PowerCADD.
In 2014 Engineered Software began the conversion of PowerCADD to the Mac’s 64-bit architecture. The first of that conversion was released as 9.1.4 which removed a large swath of dependence upon legacy system routines. Later 9.1.6 was released which continued that effort and added numerous stability and performance improvements. WildTools 10.1.3 was released at that time as well. Since the release of 9.1.6 we have continued the improvements to PowerCADD and the addition of additional features to WildTools. There was to be a coordinated release of these improvements with PowerCADD 9.5 and WildTools 10.x.x. However, Apple moved faster than expected phasing out the 32-bit libraries which PowerCADD 9 and WildTools 10 are dependent. Seeing the speed with which Apple was obsoleting the 32-bit architecture, the interim PowerCADD 9.5, which still supported the 32-bit OS, was set aside so as not to waste additional development resources on the now-obsolete 32-bit MacOS. Our full attention, beginning in 2018, has been on rewriting the core of PowerCADD and its interface to the 64-bit architecture. We expect the 64-bit version to be released as PowerCADD 10 late 2020.
The PowerCADD 10 supports many of the most user-requested features which were impossible to retrofit into the 32-bit PowerCADD 9: dark mode, tabbed windows, full memory access, fully revamped plugin architecture, modern Cocoa interface, 64-bit performance and more. PowerCADD 10 remains the familiar PowerCADD platform you know.
At Engineered Software our entire focus is to make a clean and absolute transition to the 64-bit OS. As such, no additional development is expected to 32-bit PowerCADD 9 outside of maintenance release.
Todd
In 2014 Engineered Software began the conversion of PowerCADD to the Mac’s 64-bit architecture. The first of that conversion was released as 9.1.4 which removed a large swath of dependence upon legacy system routines. Later 9.1.6 was released which continued that effort and added numerous stability and performance improvements. WildTools 10.1.3 was released at that time as well. Since the release of 9.1.6 we have continued the improvements to PowerCADD and the addition of additional features to WildTools. There was to be a coordinated release of these improvements with PowerCADD 9.5 and WildTools 10.x.x. However, Apple moved faster than expected phasing out the 32-bit libraries which PowerCADD 9 and WildTools 10 are dependent. Seeing the speed with which Apple was obsoleting the 32-bit architecture, the interim PowerCADD 9.5, which still supported the 32-bit OS, was set aside so as not to waste additional development resources on the now-obsolete 32-bit MacOS. Our full attention, beginning in 2018, has been on rewriting the core of PowerCADD and its interface to the 64-bit architecture. We expect the 64-bit version to be released as PowerCADD 10 late 2020.
The PowerCADD 10 supports many of the most user-requested features which were impossible to retrofit into the 32-bit PowerCADD 9: dark mode, tabbed windows, full memory access, fully revamped plugin architecture, modern Cocoa interface, 64-bit performance and more. PowerCADD 10 remains the familiar PowerCADD platform you know.
At Engineered Software our entire focus is to make a clean and absolute transition to the 64-bit OS. As such, no additional development is expected to 32-bit PowerCADD 9 outside of maintenance release.
Todd