PowerCADD Future

[Bob.S]

I would be on board with saving PowerCadd somehow. I have been reading what seems to me some very good options and I can agree to about all of them.

I'd certainly pay more for PowerCadd. For example Sketchup Pro is $300 a year. I'd pay that for PowerCadd. Honestly I don't know why Powercadd has not asked for more money in the past. I think I paid $300 per license for an upgrade 7-10 years ago and have perfectly willing to pay for more since then but nothing ever came up.
Saw an option for a PowerCadd co-op ownership. I'd be a part of that. maybe a small part since I only have one license at this time. But put a few thousand of us in the pot and that adds up.

I wish the owners would have reached out to us before making this decision. I don't know if they are just done with working on it (which is understandable, everyone wants to retire at some point) or if they just didn't see a profit at the end of their work. if it was the profit, charging more, probably a lot more, seems like a reasonable consideration.

[SteveMouzon]

I don't know if they are just done with working on it (which is understandable, everyone wants to retire at some point) or if they just didn't see a profit at the end of their work.

I take Todd at his word that he's done with it. And I completely understand, as I've had a number of ventures where, for various reasons, I finally had to admit that I was done with them. And so I walked away without regret (except maybe that I waited so long) and typically moved on to something which worked out better.

With that said, I have a drawing legacy with PowerCADD going back to December 1994, and the idea of over a quarter-century of work becoming inaccessible someday is daunting, so I'm one of many who wants to see PowerCADD live on in some form. And then there's the fact that nothing else comes close to the ease and beauty of drawing, and the thought of learning any of the alternative tools is just nauseating.

WildTools replacing Layout in SketchUp would be the dream scenario for the future, as would WildTools somehow getting folded into FormZ, as some have mentioned. If one of these options would import PowerCADD drawings, that would be fabulous, and would cover both past and future. What doesn't work for any of us, I suspect, is PowerCADD and WildTools being lost forever.

[Alfred Scott]

I'm sure there's a ton of work to do. I've been through many transitions before, and they are never easy but I'm not afraid of hard work.

Just today Greg Johnson found an error in square tubing in Nuts & Bolts.

I had the 'bright idea' of having the Clip/Combine/Union tools working with Beziers. A logical thing to want but it turned out to be very difficult to fit into the existing tools which operate on polygons. All I got was a new supply of humility.

I'm really looking forward to getting into the XML for the files.

Stupid in Richmond,

Alfred

[Jon Buswell]

Hi All,

Todd, given that you can't publish the list of registered users for obvious reasons, can Engineered Software please send a group email communique to all license holders signalling the end of support and asking those who would like to contribute to the discussion of PowerCADD's future to register on this forum.

That will sort out the license holders who have moved on to something else and those who still use it and will be affected by it's discontinuation.

Following that, can you please make an estimation of numbers of programmers, length of time and ball park cost to re-write the software to be compatible with current hardware and OS. I think for the majority of us prepared to invest, we need to know whether it's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions..

And finally, does Engineered Software produce anything other than PowerCADD. Could it be as simple as selling the company to a consortium (us) or floating the company publicly for us all to buy shares in - something like that? For instance if we owned the company and got PowerCADD rewritten to a point where it is able to be once again a commercially viable product, perhaps we could sell it on to Sketchup. As it stands now it's just going to mac heaven.

Having read the posts here it seems clear that you are at the end of the line with PowerCADD - that you can't see a way forward because it's too much work and you'll never see a return on your own investment. But please bear in mind that by not investing in PowerCADD you are essentially forcing the users to invest in something else. For those with multiple seats, moving to AutoCAD or something like that represents tens of thousands a year in subscriptions plus the cost to train existing staff and maintain legacy systems to enable an archive of 20+ years of drawings. I'm sure all of us would like to be given the choice to invest in PowerCADD's future or switch to something else rather than just having to switch.

Todd, I'm certain that you underestimate what a clean and near perfect CAD system you, Bill and Alfred have created, I can't imagine that Autodesk has such a loyal dedicated bunch of users.

It's also fair to say that because the software is so good, that people might not think to upgrade from PC8 to PC9 and frankly your marketing and communication is pretty woeful in that area.

So, please, send out an email to everyone in your user database so we can get a sense of how many of us are out there and prepared to invest in this. I think that will give us a much clearer picture of whether or not we can move forward.

Thanks

Jon Buswell

[RTCool]

I'm willing and interested in finding some pathway forward.

It's utterly frustrating from this POV to watch a perfectly capable and fast piece of software cease to be because Apple decided to "improve" the platform. How is that an improvement? In the mean time, Trimble is trying to build a 2D surface element type drawing program (like PC) from scratch, and it's both lame (lacking power and feautres) and slow to the point of constant complaints from faithful users. It's astonishing to see progress go backwards, and so much dysfunction in providing what all these end users want and need.

[Matt_A]

I have a question and a suggestion for all the folks who are tearing their hair out on this thread.

What would you do if Apple never made another device?

Get off the hamster wheel.

[Charles Freeborn]

At minimum I would like to see the current version of PC supported at it's current OS compatibility. I'd assume it already is - meaning no further updates required at using whichever is the most recent OS it was developed for. Beyond that, I think that it could either be a crowd sourced funding situation or sold to another developer who sees enough market potential to soldier on. Personally I'd kick in some dough to keep it alive, but with the big guns (Autodesk, Vector Works, etc) domination it'll be hard to keep these niche / boutique products afloat.

[lava]

Derek has kindly created a new forum for us, and I have posted a first Topic for registering your interest in finding a solution to move PowerCadd forward. Please just post there once, so it can allow us to quickly make a count of interested parties. No discussion of What Ifs there please, simply start a new Topic for that.

Link: https://www.engsw.com/PowerCADDForum/vi ... ?f=6&t=242

[Gilbert]

Todd, Could you give us a ball park of how many active user there are on PowerCadd 9.
This would give us an ideal of the possible market.
Thanks for your work over the years.

[bellarchitect]

Gilbert, you can review all of the members on this Forum by going to the bottom the page and clicking on Members. I believe I counted about 264 members. That's just registered members on this Forum. Frank