Bricscad™ V8

Installation

Bricscad V8 installs and runs independently from previous Bricscad versions.

Version 8.2.11

13/6/2008  

Fixed

• SR15355,SR15433 - unwanted opening of Prompt History Window in '-DIMSTYLE' command.
• TaskDD890: using /p switch with .arg file failed to find the file.
• TaskDD890: values from plot paths were retrieved from previous userprofile.
• SR15393 - when copying a leader the alignment of the text would change.
• TaskDD908 - OLE - fixed the activation of embedded Bricscad document in the Bricscad application.
• SR15372, TaskDD596, SR1539 - Justification settings of copied LEADER's MTEXT differs from original MTEXT.
• SR15734 - In translated versions, the tooltips for ESNAP were not translated.
• Prompt messages of 'recover'command and 'pedit' command were not translatable.
• Miscellaneous DCL fixes.
• SR 15792 - crash on loading dxf files that had missing textstyles.
• SR 15516 - when loading partial cui files the program now also looks up the corresponding resource dll and/or mnl file as follows :
  1. It looks for a file in the same folder with the same name but extension .dll or .mnl
  2. It looks for a file anywhere in the search path, with the same name but extension .dll or .mnl.
• SR15979 - In command PEDIT, crash when editing vertices of polylines when osnap was on.
• DRX/BRX - OdApDocument::database()->writeFile() throws an exception.
• DRX/BRX - Added save method to OdApDocument class.
• DRX/BRX - SR15171 - default argument should be returned in case of OdDbUserIO::select.

Version 8.2.10

15/5/2008  

Fixed

• Much too large undosteps after creating a new drawing with QNEW or NEWWIZ. Even though redo still worked perfectly in such cases, this is an important fix.
• SR15781 - crash when displaying problem drawing during processing of viewport-dependent layers.
• TaskDD837 - SR 15011, 15132, 15631 - Part of the drawing display disappeared after editing an entity in some user-provided drawings, regen was needed to redisplay the entitities.
• TaskDD877 - SR 15525 - Display of polyline width was scaled wrongly for polylines contained in blocks.
• TaskDD873 - SR 15370 - Smoothness of spline curves was improved.
• SR 15502, 15508 - fixes for SHX text display with non unicode fonts.
• SR15259 - fixed hang on switching radio buttons under Windows 2000.
• SR15234 EATTEDIT dialog message box appeared: "An unexpected error accurred. The application became unstable. It is recommended to save your work to a temporary file and restart the application."
• TaskDD77 - SR 15371 - Fixed loading of password-protected dvb-projects. The program now asks for a password instead of failing to load the project.
• SR15595: when displaying/printing a linetyped entity, and a dot matches the end point of previously output dash, that dot shouldn't be output.
• TaskDD710 - PEDIT "break" option broke a closed pline incorrectly, it didn't add a substitute for the start vertex to the second produced pline.
• SR 15323: When freezing/thawing a layer in the current viewport, the layer list scrolled back to the top, and the user had to explicitly do a regen to see the result.
• SR 15571 - choosing a mode for the 'shademode' command did not work in translated versions.
• TaskDD835 - Printing of gradient hatches had been broken since V8.2.1
• On saving to pre 2007 format text got converted to \M+000nn characters.
• Improved support for non unicode shx fonts.
• Following operations failed if called in non-main thread (e.g. from drawing preview creation thread or from a thread created by DRX app) or when called asynchronously via PostMessage(): erasing OLE item, undo/redo of OLE item creating/erasing, loading/saving OLE item, autosaving drawings, executing a registered VBA command, INSERTOBJ of a file, -VBALOAD, VBAUNLOAD, ADDINRUN, VBARUN, AcadApplication.RunMacro, copying layout from template, export to BMP/WMF/EMF, saving or resetting DBMOD on CLOSE, re/setting DBMOD on QUIT, Q/SAVE, applying MTEXT editor results, sds_callinmainthread().
• SR15077 - Text "%%uword" should render "word" underlined.
• COM exe-server is registered with REGCLS_SINGLEUSE flag to allow each COM client to have its own server instance.
• SR15394 - failure to copy entities between drawings with AcadDatabase:CopyObjects

Version 8.2.8

2/4/2008  

Fixed

• TaskDD828 - Crash after execution of DRX applications built with .NET.
• TaskDD818 - WIPEOUTS and background of MTEXT entities printed as black.
• SR 15267 - paperspace entities are not visible if layout has flag "draw viewports first" set and the main viewport has frozen layers.
• SR 15259 - hangup on switching radio buttons under Windows 2000.
• SR 15201 - hangup in drawing explorer after switching to another windows application and back.
• SR 15208&15313 - Deferred tangent snap: Failure to create a line that was tangent to two circles .
• SR 15343 - Shifted print output for paperspaces when printing with option "Layout". This happened when an UCS was active in the paperspace.
• DCL layout fixes:
  • SR 15188 - a named definition of the form b:a{...} incorrectly required 'a' to be defined earlier in the DCL file.
  • SR 15227 - minimum width of default label of button is now the width of a single character.
  • It is now possible to retrieve coordinates of an imagebutton when it is pressed.
• Localisation issue: Aliases , which are stored in Bricscad.pgp, became unusable because the file format was converted to unicode after editing through the CUSTOMIZE dialog.

Version 8.2.6

21/3/2008  

Fixed

• SR15186 - Widths of spaces in TTF text were too wide.
• SR15177 - Avoid crash for drawings with self-referring blocks.
• TaskDD339 - Fade settings were ignored for some types of images.
• Orthomode was ignored during creation of leaders.
• Spell check dialog closed immediately without doing text substitutions.
• DCL layout fixes:
  • The default behaviour for dialogs is now fixed size instead of resizable.
  • Initial size of images and imagebuttons was wrong if no explicit width was specified.
  • Added padding around the text content of labels.
  • When a text component is right or center aligned, its text content is now also right or center aligned.

Version 8.2.5

18/3/2008  

New

• Layerstate manager in Drawing Explorer.
• Added Export option for PDF. Export to PDF can be configured with command PDFOPTIONS.
• Command DwgProps for editing the file properties of a drawing.

Improved

• Smooth outline of TrueTypeFont text in print and display.
• TaskDD710 - PLINETYPE variable is now taken into account by the PEDIT command.
• TaskDD705 - confusing lineweightDisplayScale setting was removed and replaced by LWDISPSCALE
• New File Open dialog implemented using WxWidgets.
• Performance: Faster regen and large reduction of memory footprint for drawings with many inserts, through optimal sharing of information between multiple inserts of the same block.
• Performance: Faster redraw of hatches with solid fill.
• Performance: Much faster editing of large selections when properties panel is closed.
• Performance: Faster print preview, faster zooming in print preview, faster redraw of preview when the overlap status of the preview window changes.
• TaskDD583 - added "Print..." menu item to the right click menu of the layout tabs
• Upgraded to Dwgdirect 2.5.

Fixed

• SR15075 - Entity Properties Toolbar - Layer Control - Clicking an icon to change any layer's property, caused the list to scroll automatically to show the current layer.
• SR14900 - Entity Properties Toolbar - Layer Control - It was not possible to assign a frozen layer to a selection set.
• SR 14621 - always show "ByColor" text in "Plot style" property for color-dependent drawings (when PSTYLEMODE=1).
• SR15007 - COPY/MOVE didn't display distance/angle notation when COORDS = 2
• Coordinate button in properties panel, when a UCS is active : points were incorrectly converted from ucs to wcs, resulting in wrong dynamics and wrong result point.
• SR 15033: Several problems related to Architectural unit conversion were fixed.
• SR 15035: Angular dimension was displayed as 7d15'60" instead of 7d16'0"
• Implemented snapping to ACIS objects when shademode is not wireframe.
• Command DIMSTYLE;list no longer opens command history window.
• TaskDD815 - SR 14910: After 'zoom extents', the papersheet boundary was drawn using the wrong linetype.
• Support dxf-2 for subentity SEQEND.
• MAIL command now sets Subject of the mail to the name of the current drawing instead of "Bricscad mail", and preserves the name of the attached drawing instead of renaming it to 'tmpMailXXX.dwg'
• Drawing Explorer
  • Linetypes, gridview: when the explorer was closed while a cell edit was active, the cursor was no longer redrawn correctly, it remained an arrow.
  • Xrefs: it was impossible to rename Xref inserts.
  • SR 14006 Drawings Tree: when the 'Add Folder' item was clicked while the item already was selected, the 'Choose a folder' dialog did not open.
  • Images:
  • use editor with browse button for 'Saved Path' field
  • when 'Saved Path' field is edited, and image is loaded, reload it and update preview panel
  • Coordinate button in properties panel, when a UCS is active : points were incorrectly converted from ucs to wcs, resulting in wrong dynamics and wrong result point.
  • TaskDD822 - SR 15011: if PaperSpace SORTENTSTABLE contains ModelSpace entities, then ModelSpace entities could be displayed in PaperSpace.
  • SR 14622 - layer grid: when the 'Lineweight' column was too small, text overflowed in the column next to it, even when the cells of that column were not empty.
  • SR 14840 - layer grid: When you tried to THAW the current layer (possible when more than one layer is selected), a message appeared: "The current layer cannot be frozen. Please specify a different layer". Similar for layer On/Off.
• TaskDD807 - allow zooming to extents, when extents of the scene are huge.
• TaskDD583 - "Page setup" dialog didn't save values to layout when "Save to layout" setting in "Print" dialog was off
• SR 14877 - compare section declarations in mnu files case insensitive. (e.g. allow both ***image and ***IMAGE)
• Circle should be drawn opaque in kHiddenLine mode.
• SR 13510 - Bug in hatch rendering algorithm
• TaskDD795 - selection of OdDbWipeout entity.
• It was not possible to explode an entity inside a paperspace viewport.
• TaskDD810 - Rectangular xclip boundary definition was not being calculated correctly.
• Clipped viewport could not be deleted.
• Relative path option for xref/image attachment didn't work.
• SR 14543 - when double clicking or drag-and-dropping a file onto Bricscad, and the path contained the sequence " (..)", the file could not be opened.
• TaskDD788 - VBA - input of text was not possible in any language except English in VbaIde.
• DCL fixes
  • edit_box: Instead of firing action on each text-change, fire action on losing focus
  • allow height/width attributes to be double
  • allow numeric attributes to be specified quoted
  • code for displaying focus rectangle on an imagebutton
  • connect enter with callback for listbox and callback for imagebutton.
  • skip focus of Image (as opposed to imagebutton)
  • correction to the dcl attribute "value" for lists (listbox or dropdown): the value attribute now works to specify the default list-item, even if the list is populated afterwards through lisp calls (instead of by the list-attribute)
  • @include directive now uses search path
  • get_attr now works correctly on a numeric attribute
  • implemented behaviour of a radiogroup: action_tile, get_tile, set_tile (all unselected allowed)
  • multiple selection on a listbox.
  • setting the value of a Dialog through set_tile now correctly sets the label (window text) of the dialog
  • a dropdown should return empty string "" instead of "-1" and its default selection should be the first item, even if the content is supplied at runtime
  • SR 14943 - 1. The escape key and close button did not call the cancel component.
  • SR 14943 - 2. Cancel\Skip was displayed as Cancel\kip because \S was treated as an escape sequence.
  • SR 14977 - 1. colorcode / colorindex were used incorrectly
  • SR 14977 - 2. added color keywords to parser: red, black, etc... Those keywords do no longer need to be quoted: before only color="red" was valid, now color=red also.
• LISP
  • (textbox) function - if "\\U+nnnn" Unicode references were embedded into dynamic strings
  • (vla-CopyObjects) function returned nil.
  • (vl-get-resource) malfunctioned.
  • SR14506 - support function argument as expression in (apply..) eg
    (setq a (list 'OR T nil))
(apply (car a) (cdr a))
  • Decoding problem with Protected Lisp files, generated by CONVERT shareware utility.
  • Avoid redundant multiple calls to S::STARTUP.
  • TaskDD797 - IMAGEATTACH command did not run from lisp.

Version 8.1.19

8/2/2008  

Fixed

• TaskDD794 - image was added in layer 0 instead of the current layer.
• TaskDD257 - Profile Manager now works with profiles for the local language.
• User interface was adapted to the fact that there is no support for PCP files.
• Corrections to new DCL support:
• Edit_box: due to listening to incorrect events, sometimes the last typed character was never received.
• Group of radio-buttons: set_tile/get_tile have been implemented.
• Edit_box, setting selection with mode_tile did not work.
• Aspect_ratio should not just be width/heigh or height/width, but rather unknown dimension/known dimension. if width and aspect are given, aspect equals height/width, if height and aspect are given, aspect equals width/height.
• Support "cluster" container as a concrete type.
• Escape should cancel the dialog.
• Enter activates the button that has focus.
• Don't give focus to images that are not buttons.
• If no initial focus is specified, the initial focus will be set to the default component or the cancel component (in that order).
• Support for "cluster" type container.
• The close-button top right of the dialog is now enabled and triggers cancel.

Version 8.1.18

2/2/2008  

New

• COM - added support for mass properties for solids and regions.
• TaskDD764 - added 'area' property for Hatch entities in Properties bar and LIST command output.
• TaskDD154 - DVIEW command now supports clipping.
• New DCL engine
  • Newly developed DCL parser, which uses stricter parsing of DCL code and yields early feedback on errors (if audit_level > 0).
  • Improved support for nested calls of dialogs.
  • Added support for resizeable dialogs and images.
  • Added support for multi-column lists.
  • Support DIASTAT system variable.
  • Aspect ratio of image tiles is now width/height. Previously it was the reverse, which was wrong. Warning: this can cause some existing DCL dialogs to display incorrectly. The dcl files then need to be corrected.
• Change in 'delete' functionality of the Drawing Explorer. Before, for layers, linetypes, text styles, blocks and dimension styles, the delete command actually performed a purge i.o a delete. Now a real delete is done, and a dialog is shown to give user a chance of changing items and entities that will be affected by the delete. A 'Purge' button was added to the dialog as well.

Improved

• TaskDD774 - faster pan and zoom because raster images are not shown anymore during real time operations.
• TaskDD774 - support IMAGEQUALITY. This allows to reduce the resolution of raster images during editing.
• Startup dialog (NEWWIZ) is displayed now when the bricscad is started and STARTUP sysvar is On.
• TaskDD780 - Insert/Image/XRef dialog - inserted items are now sorted in the list.

Fixed

• TaskDD555 - Option "Position" for command ATTEDIT did not work when justification of text was RIGHT or CENTER.
• TaskDD768 - upside-down printing in GDI was modified to accomodate CNC machines.
• Printing - header/footer were missing when plot area was of 'Window' type.
• TaskDD744 - handling of incompatible PC3 files was improved:
  • The PC3 editor will allow to edit any PC3, but will issue warnings if a PC3 is incompatible with the installed printer drivers.
  • Print dialog, printer combo box:
    • Shows warning when a PC3 is selected that was created for a different printer driver version.
    • If the PC3 also uses a different size for the printer's private data, the PC3 will not be selectable.
• TaskDD716 - Crash when a VBA macro that is called with lisp vlax-invoke-method asks for user input.
• SR 14330, SR 14334, SR 14289 - ESNAP and ORTHOMODE were ignored when entering a point during PAUSE in a lisp command call.
• SR 13859, TaskDD719 - viewports switched places during print/preview.
• TaskDD760 - Fixed dimension text formatting, zero was trimmed away unnecessarily.
• SR 12622 - dimension values were rounded incorrectly.
• SR 14191 - Rounding errors occurred with lisp function rtos. Eg (rtos 0.235 2 2)
• SR14372 - DRX-SDS applications: using pause("\\") in sds_command was broken.
• SR14391 - Properties panel->Measurement for angular dimensions is always in radians. It should depend on value of AUNITS variable.
• SR 13727 - On changing textstyle of text or mtext, not all required properties were updated to the new style. (for example height, width factor, oblique angle of text were not changed).
• TaskDD381 - MATCHPROP now handles all the required properties for MText entities.
• Removed command COORDINATE, which is just used address COORDS system variable.
• SR14421 - WBLOCK now uses SAVEFORMAT for saving in different file formats.
• TaskDD163 - after VPCLIP on a viewport, the zoom distance changed. Also it was not possible to remove or replace an existing clipping boundary.
• TaskDD195 - COM - Utility.GetKeyword fixed
• TaskDD752 - after LISP entmod subentities in paper space (e.g. block attributes) have the space's block as their owner instead of their real owners.
• LISP SR14506 - (apply...) function wouldn't take functions passed as lisp variable
• LISP SR14162 - implementation of (vlax-ldata-...) function family, which is based on "VLO_VL" Custom Entity.
• LISP Avoid crash on lisp stack Overflow.
• LISP (vl-filename-mktemp) didn't accept multiple NIL arguments.
• LISP (vla-get-...) functions which query for colors of display configuration returned wrong datatypes.
• SR14302 - fixed crosshair cursor color (color was wrong when background not black)
• DD637: after modifications in the Customize dialog, all toolbar positions were reset to default. Now positions are preserved.
• When selecting a bitmap file for a CUI file, its full path should be saved
• SR 14227 - Changes in customize dialog were ignored.
• Custom snap menu in partial menugroup was not found.
• SR14108 - Spaces at the end of a menu string (macro) are skipped now.
• DD637 - menucmd entries are now cleared with loadMainCuiFile, but not with minor changes
• SR14133 - support menu strings with ^C calls several locations of the string instead of just at the start. Added unit tests.
• Read PGP aliases file as ANSI instead of as UTF-8.
• SR14461 - Drawing Explorer, Text Styles:After clicking on the header of any column the list of styles disappears
• SR14306 - Drawing Explorer, disable 'New' in menu and toolbar when a drawing is selected in the Open Drawings tree, or in the Drawings tree

Background Info

• Command OLDHATCH will be removed in V8.2.

Version 8.1.14

10/1/2008  

New

• TaskDD698: Rewrote the NEWWIZ dialog. Command NEW has a new behaviour, it now always asks for a template. There is a new command QNEW, which will create a new drawing without asking for a template if a template is present. WARNING: This new behaviour may require adaptations in external applications.Alias 'N' points to QNEW instead of NEW.
• Support for 'menucmd' lisp function
• TaskDD668 - GRIPOBJLIMIT system variable was added: limits the number of entities that can be gripped at the same time when using window selection. The default value is 100. CTRL+A (selgrips;all) and sssetfirst still create grips for all entities.
• The SdsMigrate sample project was ported from VC6 to VC8 ( = MSVC 2005).
• TaskDD725 - Hatch dialog : "Select entities" button was added.

Improved

• Script command redesign:
  • Executing a script command from lisp or ARX, is now, like in acad, delayed until the lisp or ARX code is finished.
  • When more than one scripts are loaded this way, only the last one will be loaded.
  • When the script command is called within a script, the calling script stops executing at the point where it called the script command.
• SR 13923 - Drawing Explorer - Delete button for blocks : purge instead of erase.
• TaskDD746 - APBOX variable was not obeyed when trying to set the snap Aperture Box size.
System variable 'displaySnapApertureBox' was a duplicate for APBOX and was removed from Settings dialog and Preferences.
• Alias 'DIM' pointed to command 'DIMENSION'. This is reversed : 'DIMENSION' is now an alias for the command 'DIM'.
• SHADEMODE command: current mode was not printed in the prompt.
• TaskDD599 - Several SR's - Bricscad now supports using lisp getXXX functions during the execution of a lisp (command).
• Several improvements in the DDVPOINT dialog
• Added option to print a saved view in PRINT and PAGESETUP dialog and improved the layout of the dialogs.
• TaskDD583 - Print Dialog - Added the ability to use settings from previous plot.
• TaskDD583 - Print Dialog - Enabled mode "Print only area within the specified window".
• Appload dialog - the file 'appload.dfs', if it doesn't exist, is created in the folder specified by ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX, instead of the installation folder.
• PERFORMANCE:
  • Reduced memory footprint
  • TaskDD311 - drastic speed up of regen time for xclipped xrefs.
  • TaskDD706 - When trimming many entities in one step the screen is only updated at the end of the operation.
  • TaskDD721 - Iterating over a drawing with entnext is now much faster.
  • TaskDD471 - slow explode, erase, copy, regeneration in drawings with many nested inserts.
• LISP: implemented (vlax-map-collection)
• LISP: implemented true functionality for (alloc) and (expand)
• Upgraded DWGDIRECT version to 2.04.2

Fixed

• SR 13805 - -BHATCH/Properties option displayed the following inappropriate warning when the last used pattern name was entered: "'PatternName' Has no global match in its initget string! Empty string returned."
• SR 13781 - Failed to create a hatch if the picked point was located within a text boundary.
• TaskDD266 - Hatch on MINSERT entities did not work.
• TaskDD704 - It was possible to create hatches with density exceeding MAXHATCH limit.
• Solid hatches could not be selected by clicking them.
• TaskDD737 - Menuload/unload commands : group names, ids and aliases are now searched case insensitive.
• TaskDD730 - Menu Option 'Last' was shown twice when executing command 'offset'.
• SR 13156 - mnu to cui conversion: diesel command in pulldown menu was failing.
• SR 13552 - The context menu for OLE objects is now defined in the cui file, and no longer contains a 'edit' option: in-place editing of OLE objects is not supported.
• SR 13552 - Fixed inserting a Openoffice spreadsheet by copy/paste (was displayed as a tiny dot).
• TaskDD732 - Entity snap did no longer work after executing command 'trim' with option 'last'.
• TaskDD707 - Settings Dialog : clicking the Find Next button would cause a failure when a subproperty was selected.
• TaskDD698 - Wrong default name for saving new drawings.
• SR 14006 - Drawings Explorer, Drawings Tree: Unhandled exception when right-clicking in the blank area.
• TaskDD606 - Conversion from mnu to cui was improved: support using same id for different items, support specifying more than one TB name (alias).
• TaskDD586 - Implemented relative path support for XRef and Image entities in 'Attach' dialog.
• SR 13944 - Drawings Explorer, Dimensions, Preview: When DIMSCALE is changed, in the preview it looked as if DIMLFAC was changed, because of the rescaling of the view. Now the view is only rescaled when the size changes by 300%.
• SR 13760 - Drawing Explorer, Dimensions: setting DIMADEC (Dim Angle Precision) used wrong option menu when DIMAUNIT (Dim Angle Units) was set to 1 (=Degrees/Minutes/Seconds).
• TaskDD652: Fix DIMOVERRIDE (SR12560, SR12561, SR12622). DIMBLK{ ,1,2} and DIMLDRBLK vars correctly handle "." as input. Also override the dimstyle of each dimension individually to preserve previous overrides.
• SR 13637 - corrected DIMAUNIT option list (0-3 i.o. 0-4).
• TaskDD526 - SR 12532 - Last point in the leader entity was drawn incorrectly when DIMTAD==1 and DIMSCALE!=1.
• SR 12620 - Rotated dimensions were drawn incorrectly when setting oblique angle.
• SR 13712, SR 13713, SR 13739 - Setting variables DIMTIH, DIMTOH and DIMSOXD had opposite effects in the Drawings Explorer and in the Settings Dialog.
• TaskDD656 - Program startup option /p profile_file.arg now sets the current profile. Default search path is now used to find the profile file.
• SR 13900 - Folder List Dialog: If you type in a path, and press Ok immediately afterwards - without pressing Enter first or selecting another row, the path was not saved.
• SR 13949 - Plot offset values were not saved when closing the Print dialog.
• SR 13634 - Printing a part of a raster image by Window, in Landscape orientation did not work.
• Plot Stamp fields $Company and $Name were not substituted with the License Manager's Registered Organization and Owner.
• Localization: Plotstyle 'ByLayer' and 'ByBlock' were not translated in the properties bar.
• TaskDD744 - SR 14019 - A crash occurred in the Print dialog when the printer driver used for creating the PC3 was a different version from the driver used for printing. This happened if the format changed for private data that the printer stores in the Pc3. This was reported for a.o. RICOH printers. A check was added to verify if the private data is usable for the printer being used.
• SR 14212 - Inaccurate scale factor in PLOT command because it was rounded off according to precision system variable LUPREC.
• SR 13793 - Select Plot Style Dialog: Fixed: names were cut off.
• SR 14075 - Plotstyle editor : plotstyle names with non-english characters show in unicode notation (\U+nnnn) .
• SR 13368 - TRIM with Fence option : trim didn't work when a TEXT entity was accidentally selected by the fence.
• SR 13804 - ROTATE command should not take ANGBASE/ANGDIR into account by default when the angle is specified.
• SR 12839 - Fillet radius of rectangle was corrupted after a stretching.
• SR 12941 - Fillets of arcs with lines gave wrong results.
• SR 13728 - Error when trying to switch GRIPS on/off in Settings dialog.
• Grips should not be displayed on entities that are on locked layers.
• TaskDD196 - SR 13701 - Block insertion dialog did not allow to choose dxf files.
• TaskDD471 - Improved performance of explode, erase, copy and regeneration in a drawing with many nested inserts.
• SR 13788 - Area of polyline with arc segments was calculated incorrectly.
• SR 13839 - SR13838 - Failure to open drawings with invalid system variables or invalid preview.
• Allow underscore prefix for input _BYLAYER and _BYBLOCK input in commands CHANGEPROP, EXPLODE, LAYER, LINETYPE and RENAME.
• TaskDD705 - Support LWDISPSCALE which controls the scalefactor for lineweight display in modelspace.
• TaskDD683 - Crash when retrieving getvar AcadPrefix if its length exceeded 1023 chars.
• TaskDD695 - Crash when panning.
• SR 13865 - TaskDD753 - Double clicking an entity during a command is no longer processed as doubleclick.
• TaskDD748 - Double clicking a .dwt in the Windows Explorer starts a new drawing based on the selected template drawing.
• SR 14124 - ORTHOMODE is ignored when entering points in lisp (command) calls.
• TaskDD699 - PEDIT: UCS is aligned along the entity's normal when editing polylines.
• SR 13527 - It was not possible to stretch a viewport by its corner grip nodes, if ORTHOMODE was activated.
• SR 14100 - TEMPPREFIX setting was made readonly.
• SR 14119 - After freezing a layer using the properties toolbar, undo did not regen the drawing.
• TaskDD729 - Display problem - entities with large z coordinate (>1.e98) were not displayed.
• TaskDD742 - SR14051 - Listing a line in survey units reported wrong angle.
• SR 14070 - Fixed crash in ELLIPSE command.
• TaskDD734 - Global names of external commands were not recognized when entered without underscore.
• TaskDD112 - Entities remained highlighted after command dxfout with entity selection.
• Drawing explorer: crashed when a folder was selected in the Drawings tree immediately after opening a drawing from the Drawings Tree (by double-clicking it or right-clicking and selecting 'Open Drawing')
• TaskDD759: incorrect mirror of Text entities if MIRRTEXT is off.
• TaskDD739 - SR 13968 - When creating SelectionSets, conditional filters AND and OR required at least 2 operands. This was made more flexible and now expressions of the kind (ssget "X" '((-4 . "<OR") (0 . "DIMENSION") (-4 . "OR>")))), with one operand, are also accepted.
• TaskDD311: Accuracy of selection sets depended on zoom distance. Now the accuracy depends on extents, as it should.
• During uninstalling, there was an error with the un-registration of the COM dll's.
• COM API - selection set iterator called from .NET was not reset on subsequent runs, this caused a For Each iteration to stop after the first item.
• COM API Fixes:
  • TaskDD716 - Installing Bricscad on a clean computer: The COM API could not be registered, and was not available.
  • SR 13822 - VBALOAD command : added capability to find *.dvb files in support paths.
  • SR 12970 - Utility.AngleFromXAxis gave wrong results.
  • SR 13404 - AcadDocument.SaveAs() method accepts optional 'FileType' parameter.
  • TaskDD593 - Implemented AcadDocument.StartUndoMark/EndUndoMark.
  • AcadUtility.InitializeUserInput didn't work.
  • TaskDD445 - Implemented the events AcadDocument.WindowMovedOrResized, AcadApplication.WindowMovedOrResized, AcadDocument.BeginRightClick, AcadDocument.BeginDoubleClick.
  • TaskDD467 - SR 12288 - object.IntersectWith method now returns empty Variant/ArrayOfDouble instead of Variant/Error if the objects don't intersect.
  • TaskDD589 - AcadArc.ArcLength() always returns a positive value.
  • TaskDD514: Editing dimensions - it was not possible to set different arrowheads.
• LISP API Fixes:
  • SR13619 - Lambda function could not be evaluated under certain conditions.
  • LISP: SR13067: problem retrieving dotted pair resbuf structures (x . y) from SDS applications, when x was a DXF group code.
  • LISP: problem with sds_getsym() function - Lisp variables with several prefixes such as colons (":") could not be retrieved properly.
  • LISP: SR14136: managing default *error* handler has changed to exactly meet AutoLisp behaviour : if *error* default handler is overwritten by user code, default *error* is not restored after Lisp execution now.
  • (vlax-registry-read) now returns nil if registry key is not present.
  • Better error recovery in case of lisp stack overflow and when an error occurs inside a (command) call.
  • For closed documents, all (vlr-...) reactor objects are now removed.
  • SR13950 - Writing text containing non English characters with lisp function write-line converted the characters to the wrong codepage.
  • SR 13703, SR 13720 - 'imageattach' when called from Lisp didn't keep image file path.
  • TaskDD756 - From lisp and script, (command "insert" "~") now opens the insert dialog.

Background Info

The new behaviour of commands NEW, QNEW and NEWWIZ is listed below. 2step means the command asks for a template, 1step means it does not.

system variables	QNEW	NEW	NEWWIZ
BASEFILE set/FILEDIA on/STARTUP on	1step	wizard	wizard
BASEFILE set/FILEDIA off/STARTUP off	1step	2step	wizard
BASEFILE set/FILEDIA off/STARTUP on	1step	2step	wizard
BASEFILE set/FILEDIA on/STARTUP off	1step	file dialog	wizard
No BASEFILE/FILEDIA on/STARTUP on	wizard	wizard	wizard
No BASEFILE/FILEDIA off/STARTUP off	2step	2step	wizard
No BASEFILE/FILEDIA off/STARTUP on	2step	2step	wizard
No BASEFILE/FILEDIA on/STARTUP off	file dialog	file dialog	wizard

Version 8.1.7

27/11/2007  

Fixed

• TaskDD716 - Application COM-server was not registered correctly, leading to VBA, LISP VLA-* functions and COM api not being available with a new install of the program.
• TaskDD657 - Crash when undoing HIDE operation.
• TaskDD542 - It was not possible to snap to the intersection of the extensions of lines.

Version 8.1.6

16/11/2007  

New

• Version 8.1 is built with MSVC 2005 using the VC8 compiler. Bricscad 8.0.x versions were built using the VC6 compiler.
• New Print and PageSetup dialogs, implemented using WxWidgets.
• New Edit Entity Data dialog.
• New Reassociate Entity Data dialog.
• New Spell check dialog.
• New Startup dialog to replace Newwiz dialog.

Improved

• TaskDD315 - Performance improvement of entity dragging (COPY, MOVE, PASTECLIP commands, changing insert point in CHANGE command, copy/move by click & drag): drawing of dragged entities has been made interruptable, so the cursor movement is much less dependent on the amount of entities (graphics) being dragged. If the cursor stops at a location and much graphics is drawn during this pause, then it will require some time to undraw entities before further movements are made.
• SR 13310 - Implemented support for default option in toolbar command.
• menucmd: before, in lisp function 'menucmd', $I=... syntax was expected, now I=... is expected (acad compatibility).
• TaskDD656 - Added support for /P profile startup option to read .arg files.
• Settings menu > Explore Blocks... : launch _expblocks instead of _block.
• Find and Replace dialog layout was improved.
• Removed obsolete support of "done" and '`' keywords in commands. Replaced "done" by "exit" where needed.
• Diesel expressions: in case of error, display the string as it is returned by DieselEvaluate, not "error at column ...".
• Command DVIEW now uses the VPOINT dialog instead of the old VIEWCTL dialog.
• added ":S" (single selection step) mode support for ssget
• Clearer message dialog when loading of a drawing fails.
• Improved layout of vpoint dialog.
• LISP performance improvements and better exception handling.

Fixed

• TaskDD659 - If entities to be undrawn (e.g. during delete) were overlapping other entities, then the latter were not automatically redisplayed, an extra redraw was needed.
• TaskDD625 - Definition points of dimensions remained visible when dimension's layer was switched off. This led to the possibility to select and erase dimensions on switched-off layers.
• SR 12688 - Wrong lineweights were used when printing from model space with "use lineweights" layout flag on and "use plotstyles" flag off.
• TaskDD446 - SR 13471 - Wrong linetype display: Dashed linetype of last subentity of an insert overruled the linetype of the entity following the insert, if the entity had continuous linetype.
• TaskDD542 flyoversnap and snap tracking problems:
  • Flyoversnap was not available on snap tracking lines.
  • If POLARMODE was 1, then snap tracking didn't work.
  • If OSMODE > 16384 and polar snapping was on, then flyover snapping was still available.
• SR 13157 - It was impossible to substitute one block for another. The properties and entget reported that the block was replaced, but the image in the drawing was still the old block. Also fixed crash when block name was substituted by unknown via entmod() function.
• SR 13337 - When FILLMODE system variable was off, no hatch pattern preview swatches were generated in the hatch dialog.
• TaskDD649 - DONUT command option RadTanTan was not functional.
• SR 13305 - IMAGECLIP when applying a new clipping boundary the image display disappeared, an extra redraw was required to make it reappear.
• SR 13212 - After dragging a floating toolbar on top of another one, the dragged one should be displayed on top.
• MTEXT editor - Justification combo: "Bottom Right" option was missing.
• SR 13352 - If the entity properties toolbar was not loaded when starting up Bricscad, then when loading it later on, the controls were empty.
• Several smaller fixes were applied to allow localization.
• TaskDD536 - Consulting the content of the CTABLESTYLE sysvar (e.g. in Settings dialog) led to the drawing being marked as modified.
• SR 13356 - Crash when selecting aligned dimensions with coincident dimpoints and the dimension lines.
• TaskDD263 - Added bhatch and -bhatch as commands again.
• Restored prompt for VPCLIP command on a viewport that was already clipped by a non-rectangular shape.
• TaskDD648 - LISP - Add support for following syntax to cancel commands. Examples:
  • (command "dim")(command)
  • (command "dim")(command nil)
  • (command "dim" nil)
• TaskDD95 - Bug in BHATCH dialog which occurred when pattern were changed after picking points.
• TaskDD664 - Solid fill was ignored depending on current viewport.
• LISP - corrections to (ssget) behavior when used from a DCL dialog.
• LISP - SR 12647 - Corrected behavior of (sssetfirst) when it is called without arguments.
• LISP - SR 13067 - Fixed problem with returned resbuf lists when dotted pairs are included in nested resbuf lists.
• LISP - TaskDD661 - SR 13231 - Fixed problem with special apply/mapcar combinations.
• LISP - TaskDD660 - SR13231 - Corrected processing of default arguments in (vlax-invoke-method), (vlax-get-property) and related functions imported from type libraries.
• LISP - Problem with 'vlax-variant-change-type' when source and destination type were not compatible
• LISP - SR 13675 - national characters in .lsp files were misprinted on the commandline.
• SR 13559 - added Chinese/Korean/Japanese support in DCL
• SR 13386 - The print preview showed drawings shifted (related to the 'Center On Page' option).
• TaskDD671 - Plot Style Editor could generate files with wrong extension (CTB/STB).
• SR 13239 - "Move Tab" option didn't work correctly for drawings containing layouts with duplicate tab order dxf group.
• SR 13558 - in the customize dialog, revert button, when copying default.cui to the localRootFolder, create missing directories along the path..
• SR 13544 - convert unicode to ansi when passing the plot styles or plot config path to the Windows Explorer.
• F3 shortcut in localized versions : replaced _esnap (which is an alias) by _-osnap.
• Embedded VBA temporary file(prefix '__V') was not deleted in temp folder after closing the document. When files with this prefix accumulate, performance on opening files can drop significantly.
• SR 13094 - In the -attext command (attribute extraction) the sdf and cdf template files were only found in program folder, not in the general SRCHPATH. (when filedia is off).
• SR 13077 - in non english languages attaching xrefs from Drawing Explorer would fail.
• Crash in SOLIDEDIT, SHELL option.
• Context menu of layout tabs launched "PRINT" for the option "Page Setup ...".
• SDS - TaskDD579 - releasing uninitialised or already released selection set caused a crash.

Info

• The VIEWCTL tool has been removed from menus and toolbars (is the same now as SETVPOINT - DDVPOINT)
• Following commands have been renamed (acad compatibility):

  old	new
  SETVPOINT	DDVPOINT
  VIEWCTL	DDVPOINT
  VIEWPOINT	VPOINT

Version 8.0.23

17/10/2007  

Improved

• Restored performance of selecting and gripping entities to previous level after it had dropped in V8.0.21.
• On loading DXF files, text positions are now adjusted for text with non-default justification.
• Redesigned and reimplemented dialogs: HYPERLINK, DDATTDEF, IMAGEATTACH, XREF, VIEWCTL, VPOINT.
• Reimplemented the UCS command.
• HATCH: added the possibility to control the draworder of the hatch entity, both in the HATCH dialog and in command -HATCH.

Fixed

• Removed use of aliases from menus and accelerators (ppreview, expblocks, setdim, view). Toggling snaps with F3 works again.
• Crash in drawing explorer when a font was used without a font style.
• TaskDD636 - A redraw was missing after canceling a block insert with attributes.
• TaskDD479 - SAVEFILEPATH system variable was not retained between sessions.
• DIMOVERRIDE command: after entering options DIMBLK1 or DIMBLK2 it was not possible to quit the command.
• TaskDD644 - Wrong file locking behavior when a drawing was opened in multiple sessions or when a read-only drawing was opened.
• TaskDD632 - Redraw, redrawall, regen, regenall commands were not added to the command history.
• Crash on exit if a command was started from Drawing Explorer and then cancelled.
• VIEW command run from Explorer didn't restore the Drawing Explorer on cancel.
• TaskDD586 - Support 'relative' paths when attaching xref/image.
• Failure to change path of xref to relative path in Drawing Explorer.
• Xref would become invisible when Xclipping it with rectangular selection.
• SR 13210 - Mtext editor did not allow to select a font when editing Chinese text.

Version 8.0.22

09/10/2007  

Improved

• Localized versions : Alias tab in the customize dialog now shows local command names instead of global ones.

Version 8.0.21

05/10/2007  

New

• TaskDD465 - ICM files are now converted on the fly to CUI files.

Improved

• TaskDD606 - Conversion of MNU to CUI files was improved:
  • added support for more than one popmenu per "***POP..." section
  • added support for calling Image menu section "***ICON" instead of "***IMAGE"
  • if there is no "***MENUGROUP=..." identifier, get the menugroup name from the filename
  • added support for another way of specifying menu mnemonics (eg. "/ASave As" instead of "Save &As")
• Many improvements and corrections were made to facilitate localization of the application.
• TaskDD496 - Improved performance of partial redraw functions.
• TaskDD601 - Improved performance of sds_entmod function.
• Redesigned and reimplemented following dialogs: ATTEXT, APPLOAD, GROUP, RENAME LAYOUT, TIP OF DAY, DDATTE Simple attributes editor, IMAGE, INSERT, VPOINT.
• TaskDD478 - UI Customization dialog now can read and display bitmaps contained in resource DLLs.
• TaskDD152 - Rewrote UCS command and improved setByEntity behaviour for lines, polylines, 2dPolylines and traces.
• LISP - Invalid real-numbers like .5 or .1 are no longer treated as Lisp symbols - instead, they are treated as invalid real-number format now and will raise an error "can not parse number ...".
• LISP - Added (vl-vbaload) and (vl-vbarun) functions.
• SDS - LISP - Improved sds_inters() compatible behaviour in case the function input contains identical points.
• SR 13140 - Settings dialog: dimension settings were reordered and renamed to match the settings used in Dimension Style Explorer.
• Once a drawing to be inserted, has been added as a block in the blocktable, this is no longer undone if the user cancels insert operation. This was done for compatibility reasons.
• STRETCH command behaviour is acad-compatible now.
• TaskDD586 - SR 13109 - 13140 - Content of INSNAME variable is set as the default choice when starting the INSERT dialog.

Fixed

• TaskDD125 - SR 11331, 12953, 12721 - Plot styles were not applied to the content of viewports with a dxf281 value different from 0.
• TaskDD524 - SR 12530, 12532, 12538 - Polylines with non-continuous linetype applied were not printed/previewed using the lineweight defined in the plot style.
• TaskDD246 - SR 11640 - Block attributes defined on layer 0 were not drawn with the color of the layer of the block.
• TaskDD630 - SR 13095, 13121 - Block inserts on layers that are off, could still be selected using selection method 'window inside' (from left top to right bottom).
• SR 12912 Undo problem after VPCLIP command. Scenario: 1. Clip an existing viewport. 2. Undo the clipping. The rectangular viewport reappeared, but the display of the viewport content was still clipped.
• SR 13023 - Loading of .SHX font files could fail because case sensitive comparison was used for shapenames.
• SR 13113 - Incorrect scrolling increment was used when clicking arrow buttons in the scrollbars.
• TaskDD622 - SR 13034: fixed crash on ZOOM when the zoom window is degenerated (e.g. size = 0).
• TaskDD624 - SR 13078: REVCLOUD command hangs when using the Reverse option.
• Drawings Explorer crashed when infinitely trying to draw the preview of a corrupt dwg. Instead, a message "failed to draw preview" is displayed on the preview window now.
• A crash occurred using the following scenario: 1. doubleclick in a viewport in pspace. 2. start 'shademode' and set the mode from '2d wireframe' to 'hidden'. 3. doubleclick to activate the overall viewport.
• SR 12776 - COM - AcadSelectionSet method did not correctly apply the filter parameter.
• SR 13011 - COM - AcadSelectionSet.SelectByPolygon function did not accept points list input.
• COM - AcadSelectionSet.SelectAtPoint method was fixed to select an object passing through a given point and place it into a selection set. Selection by point (option "PO") also failed in the SELECT command and the ssget function.
• COM - Repeated calls of AcadSelectionSet.SelectXXX functions for the same set (erronuously) cleared the set before adding entities.
• SR 12989 - COM:
  • ActiveDocument.Name returned wrong file name extension after autosave operation.
  • ActiveDocument.Path returned empty string for new drawing. Now DWGPREFIX is returned.
  • AppPreferences::saveFilePath() was removed. Instead sysvar SAVEFILEPATH can be used.
  • SysVars::getDefaultDWGPREFIX() now points to the 'MyDocuments' folder instead of to the current directory.
• TaskDD591 - Text output to command line and text window became unsynchronized when operating under heavy processor load.
• SR 12562 - Draworder option was missing from Tools menu.
• Find option was missing from Edit menu.
• Display was not updated after undo of DRAWORDER command.
• TaskDD588 - sds_entmod() deleted XData from entity, while it should be preserved.
• TaskDD379 - OLE items from inactive layouts and viewports remained selectable.
• OLE items referred to the wrong document if for some reason during document loading a message box popped up.
• SR 13028 - Percent symbols '%' were not printed in the command bar when entered from the keyboard.
• CHANGE command: Hatch entities were always removed from selectionsets during execution of the CHANGE command. This is not necessary and no longer done. A remaining problem is elevation. If a hatch and its boundary change elevation together, the association should not be broken, but it is.
• TaskDD608 - DTEXT command failed to accept mouse input to indicate new starting points for texts.
• SR 12875 - LISP - commands could not be finished/stopped by (command nil): it (erronuously) was suppressed.
• TaskDD546 - SR 12630 - Text justification was wrongly shifted, leading to text positioning problems.
• TaskDD581 - SR 12694 - When more than one clipped viewport was present in a layout, all clipped viewports were selected when using the window inside selection method, even if the viewports were not inside or even near the selection window.
• TaskDD598 - Fixed DIMORDINATE command to obey ORTHOMODE setting and pass the right base point for dragging.
• TaskDD297 - Corrected misleading prompts when using EDITLEN Dynamic.
• A crash occurred when registering commands with duplicate names.
• SR 11815 - MText editor did not correctly process multibyte characters and mixed single byte/multiple byte text.
• SR 12847 - Reworked the fix applied in V8.0.18 - Entmod() did not erase old graphics of the modified entity, causing ghosting on the screen.
• TaskDD631 - In certain drawings it was not possible to activate a viewport in a layout.
• SR 13192 - DRAWORDER commands : added backslash for pause.
• TaskDD605 - SR 12980 - The Standard Scale drop-down list for viewport entities contained a double entry for 1/8" = 1'
• TaskDD621 - SR 12962 - Coordinates of block entities were wrong when origin of active UCS was different from WCS origin.
• SR 13166, 13167 - Settings: corrected SDI and DWGCHECK options.
• Fixed crash when loading linetypes from the linetypes combo box in the properties bar.
• SR 13205 - Localization : it was not possible to load linetypes with names containing non-english characters.

Info

• The file 'tipofday.txt' is UTF-8 encoded now.
• Following commands have been renamed:

  old	new
  SETESNAP	OSNAP
  ESNAP	-OSNAP
  MSNAPSHOT	MSLIDE
  VSNAPSHOT	VSLIDE
  FACE	3DFACE
  MESH	3DMESH
  PPREVIEW	PREVIEW
  PLANVIEWINT	APPARENT
  DTEXT	TEXT
  TEXT	-TEXT
  IDPOINT	ID
  DDRENAME	RENAME
  RENAME	-RENAME
  PPREF	RPREF
  SETRENDER	RPREF
  ROPTIONS	RENDERPRESETS
  HATCH	OLDHATCH
  BHATCH	HATCH
  -BHATCH	-HATCH
  SETLAYER	LAYMCUR
  DDRMODES	DSETTINGS
  DDLMODES	LAYER
  EXPLAYERS	LAYER
  LAYER	-LAYER
  DDLTYPE	LINETYPE
  EXPLTYPES	LINETYPE
  LINETYPE	-LINETYPE
  EXPFONTS	STYLE
  FONT	-STYLE
  STYLE	-STYLE
  EXPVIEWS	VIEW
  VIEW	-VIEW
  EXPDIMSTYLES	DIMSTYLE
  SETDIM	DIMSTYLE
  DIMSTYLE	-DIMSTYLE
  EXPXREFS	XREF
  EXPIMAGES	IMAGE

Version 8.0.19

6/09/2007  

Fixed

• Crash on dragging entities.

Version 8.0.18

5/09/2007  

New

• TaskDD408 - Grip editing of clipped images has been added
• TaskDD163 - VPCLIP command was added to clip existing viewports.
• TaskDD541 - PROJECTNAME system variable and support for the corresponding Project Search Paths has been added. The PROJECTNAME variable is stored in the drawing and designates the project to which a drawing belongs. For each project, a number of search paths can be stored in the registry. These paths will be used to find the files that are referenced by the drawing (raster images and xref files). This greatly simplifies exchange of project drawings between team members who use different folder structures on their harddisks: they only need to set the project paths once according to their folder structure, from then all project drawings will find their referenced files without further intervention. In the Settings dialog, look up the projectSearchPaths setting and click the '...' button to open the 'Project Settings' dialog. It allows to create projects and set paths.

Improved

• TaskDD556 - Findfile algorithm for plot styles was made acad-like: Bricscad finds plot styles only in the ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX\plotstyles folder.
• Drawing Explorer: added drag and drop support to copy items between drawings.
• TaskDD548 - Following entity properties were removed from the Locals browse window of the VBA editor, because they added no extra information and hindered the overview: EntityName, EntityType, ObjectID, ObjectName, OwnerID, Visible, HasExtensionDictionary, Database, Document, Application.
• SR 12738 - COM - AcadEntity.Highlight method was implemented
• TaskDD547 - Headers and Footers of printouts now support the use of certain keywords like $DwgName.
• TaskDD554 - Ellipse entity: added support for 'nearest' snap.
• TaskDD496 - Performance improvement when adding entities.

Fixed

• TaskDD519 - Lineweight settings from the plot style table were applied to filled entities like TrueType font text.
• TaskDD567 - SR 12592 - COM SelectionSet filters did not work correctly.
• TaskDD572 - SR 12807 - Crash when offsetting a polyline by 1 unit.
• TaskDD575 - SR 12563 - Exploding a scaled block with a polyline led to exploding of the polyline too.
• TaskDD564 - SR 12824 - SR 12705 - Creating new layout tabs by copying existing ones made it impossible to move them and eventually lead to instability.
• TaskDD523 - SR 12419 - EXTMIN - EXTMAX and PEXTMIN - PEXTMAX values were never updated.
• SR 12685 - Upon closing the MText editor containing a long text, part of the text would be removed.
• Crash when executing the 'Options' command while no document was open.
• TaskDD438 - SR 12823 - Text in block attributes was not processed by Find and Replace dialog.
• TaskDD566 - SR 12768 - After closing one drawing, and executing a command in another drawing, repeating the last command (with R-Click, Enter or Space) did repeat WCLOSE instead of the last command.
• TaskDD569 - SR 12566 - Conditional filters on selection sets did not work correctly.
• SR 12847 - entmod() did not erase old graphics of the modified entity, causing ghosting on the screen.
• TaskDD333 - Crash during area calculation of a stroked hatch
• TaskDD517 - Issues with SHAPE entities:
  • 1. Shapes with negative scale factor (dxf41) were drawn as if they had scale factor 1
  • 2. If two drawings were open using the shapes from the same SHX file, the shapes in the second drawing were not displayed.
• TaskDD544 - SR 12628 - Freezing a layer could influence visibility and traits of entities on other layers.
• TaskDD546 - Text position offset error if text justification was Right or Middle and shx font was used.
• TaskDD560 - SR 12722 - Crash on drawings that contain a setting conflict for the layout scale (dxf values 75 and 147).
• DXF output now always fills in groupcode 11 (second alignment point).
• TaskDD81 - SelectionSets did not preserve the order of appended elements, resulting in disorder problems for commands acting on a selection set.
• RTCAN/RTERROR return values for sds_cmd() were incorrect, this confused ADS/SDS/Lisp applications as they could not detect the distinction between user-cancel and internal processing errors.
• INSERT was interpreted as a snap option while it should be processed as a command name.
• SR 12723 - Image position file values were parsed incorrectly if the position values were prefixed or suffixed by spaces.
• TaskDD543 - SR 12387 - FIT option of MVIEW command should apply to printable area of page, not screen area.
• TaskDD359 - Viewport boundary was partially highlighted and partially plotted if 'plot paperspace last' property was disabled in layout settings.
• TaskDD552 - DWGPREFIX system variable was initialized after loading a drawing, now it is initialized before loading drawings.
• TaskDD510 - SR 12105 - COM - fixed ZoomCenter() method in model space when 'tilemode' is off.
• TaskDD590 - Hatching failure for texts with zero width bounding box.
• Commands sent to the application while the Print Preview was open were executed only after manual closing the preview window; now the Preview dialog is closed and the commands are executed.
• TaskDD556 - SR 12709 - findfile() function was ill-behaved.
• TaskDD564 - SR 12705 - Switching layout tabs could lead to unstable behaviour when combined with activating another drawing.
• TaskDD569 - SR12566 - ssGet() behaviour was incomplete and incorrect in some cases.
• LISP (substr) function: last argument can be nil, for "end-of-string" size.
• LISP (new_dialog) function: last argument can be nil, for start position.
• LISP: -2147483648 (minimum integer value) was mistakenly treated as floating point value.
• LISP: Some functions returning points were ill behaved due to passing 2D points as 3D points.
• LISP: 'ai_*' group of functions were not loaded automatically.
• LISP: failure when loading layerstatus from file(bonus tool).
• TaskDD549 - SR 12774 - Large and/or hard zoomed-in images were not displayed.

Version 8.0.16

13/08/2007  

Fixed

• Raster images were drawn incorrectly when clipped at the left or top side. This was a regression introduced in 8.0.15.
• TaskDD138 - Clipped inserts were wrongly transformed during plotting.
• Block Explorer: bitmap BMP_016_DDINSERT was not found and caused an error message to popup.

Version 8.0.15

10/08/2007  

Improved

• TaskDD418 - Improved large raster image printing: large images were printed empty on some printers due to device driver limitations, the program was made less dependent on these.
• LISP: Improved (vl-bt) function: printed stack trace depth can be defined by (vl-bt n)
• TaskDD478 - Customize dialog was further enhanced.
• TaskDD263 - Renamed commands/aliases to increase acad compatibility. For details: see 'Background Info' table below.
• TaskDD370 - COM - Implemented AcadDocument::Update method.
• TaskDD163 - Polygonal option was added to the MVIEW command.
• TaskDD374 - Plot Style Table Editor/General tab displayed long pathnames only partially.
• TaskDD256 - Added support for Plot Style Display in paper space layouts. This is controlled by a checkbox in the print settings dialog (this is a temporary location which will change during the pending Print dialog/Page Setup dialog reimplementation).

Fixed

• TaskDD186 - MText editor: SHX/SHP font was illegitimately switched to some TTF on some operations (e.g. just entering a symbol). Note, there are cases when such switching is correct - e.g. when the user tries to enter symbols which are absent in SHX/SHP fonts.
• TaskDD112 - Entities remained highlighted after using the DIMOVERRIDE command.
• TaskDD481 - Long texts could no longer be displayed by the Mtext Editor after a modification for Chinese text display.
• TaskDD534 - SR 12581 - COM AcadUtility's getting input functions returned zero/empty result instead of returning a error code/message on empty user input (pressing Space or Enter). The corrected functions are: GetInteger, GetReal, GetAngle, GetCorner, GetDistance, GetOrientation and GetPoint.
Error code and message returned are: 80210020 (hex) and "User input is a keyword" (same as in acad).
• TaskDD539 - SR 12453 - VLA/VLAX functions were not available if Bricscad was started by another application using the COM API.
• TaskDD533 - SR 12230 - Characters in the upper range of the ANSI Code Set (�� and the like) were not sorted correctly.
• TaskDD519 - Filled entities shouldn't use lineweights: if FILLMODE is 1, boundary of filled entities (SOLID, HATCH with solid pattern, TRACE, LEADER, MLEADER, POLYLINE with width) are now drawn as if their lineweight is 0. If FILLMODE is 0, lineweight will be used to draw the boundary. Boundaries of TTF TEXT, MTEXT, ATTDEF, ATTRIB are no longer affected by entity lineweight, independent from FILLMODE, TEXTFILL, LWDISPLAY values. SHX fonts were not using lineweight, now they do.
• LISP problem with (eval (read ...)) code which e.g. caused the (autoload) function to fail.
• TaskDD438 - Find and Replace: 1) "Find" hanged when option "Whole words" was used. 2) "Find" did not work with dimensions.
• TaskDD545 - SR 12583: fixed 'read-only' status of documents. Now readOnly() method returns true for all read-only cases: docAlreadyOpen, docHasReadOnlyFile, docOpenedAsReadOnly.
• TaskDD528 - SR 12544 and 12571 - STRETCH command could not cope with view changes during command execution.
• TaskDD495 - SR 12436 - During grip editing of inserts with attributes, the attributes with alignment point were not changed.

Background Info

• A number of commands have been renamed. All 'old' command names are now aliases, except for PARALLEL (reserved as a future option for ESNAP).

  old	new
  ATTDEF	-ATTDEF
  ATTEXT	-ATTEXT
  BACKGROUNDS	BACKGROUND
  BPOLY	BOUNDARY
  COLOR	-COLOR
  CONFIG	OPTIONS
  DDATTDEF	ATTDEF
  DDATTEXT	ATTEXT
  DDCHPROP	PROPERTIES
  DDCOLOR	COLOR
  DDINSERT	INSERT
  DDUNITS	UNITS
  DELETE	ERASE
  DOUGHNUT	DONUT
  EDITLEN	LENGTHEN
  EDITPLINE	PEDIT
  EXIT	QUIT
  FOG	RENDERENVIRONMENT
  FREEHAND	SKETCH
  INFLINE	XLINE
  INSERT	-INSERT
  LIGHTING	LIGHT
  PARALLEL	OFFSET
  PLANE	SOLID
  POLYLINE	PLINE
  RECTANGLE	RECTANG
  RENDSCR	RENDERWIN
  RMAT	MATERIALS
  SETCOLOR	COLOR
  SETUV	MATERIALMAP
  UNDELETE	OOPS
  UNITS	-UNITS
  VIEWPORTS	VPORTS

Version 8.0.14

7/08/2007  

Improved

• COM: AcadSelectionSet.Update() is implemented.
• COM: AcadDocument.Export() is implemented.
• LISP: backtrace call stack is automatically displayed when Lisp error happens, to help debugging.

Fixed

• CTB file was not used for printing.
• Button "custom propertes" did not work in the PC3 editor.
• Crash on combinations of multiple inserting of large blocks with viewing operations.
• Problem drawing where lines on hidden layers were still displayed.
• Contours of truetype fonts, polylines with width and 2d solids were displayed with lineweight(partial fix).
• Open/Save dialogs use system default value of "My Documents" folder top left of the dialog, even when this folder has been redefined in Windows by the user.
• Added english dictionary for spell checker and fixed path for custom dictionary and main dictionary.
• Implemented missing grip on dimension entities.
• Command OFFSET (PARALLEL) does not highlight selected items
• LISP: keyword detection ignored initget settings for getint, getreal, getorient functions.
• Importing legacy PCP files into pc3 files failed.
• -style command : "Vertical" prompt was not displayed for styles using template "txt.shx"
• Crash in textstyle dialog on leaving Font combo when txt.shx file does not exist.
• Cancelled and failed commands are now added to the command history. Previously a command that was cancelled was not available for repetition with the <enter> key.
• If shape text style contains shape file name without ".SHX" extension, then according shapes are not displayed and SHAPE command prints nothing for these styles.
• Keyboard Accelerators in partial cui files were ignored.
• COM: Fixed indexing and added enumeration support for SelectionSets collection.
• COM: Temporary switching of snapping mode (using keyboard input, or toolbar commands, or context menu commands) does not work during getting points from VBA/COM and Properties Bar.

Version 8.0.12

31/07/2007  

New

• New command "FIND". Opens a Find and Replace dialog. Scanned entities include block attributes, dimensions, text, mtext, hyperlink descriptions and hyperlink values.

Improved

• Creating, loading and unloading partial customization (cui) files is now possible in the Customize Dialog.
• Improved performance loading drawings with large images. (TaskDD339 - SR 11851)
• Settings dialog, search path : a dialog was added to edit the search path. The paths are listed separately and it is possible to browse for folders.
• Upgraded to ODA DwgDirect libraries version 2.04
• Performance: improved intersection snap between splines. (TaskDD425)
• Enhanced Attribute Editor dialog starts with the attribute that was selected by double click or simple click. (TaskDD81)
• ddedit and eattedit commands : it is no longer possible to edit entities on locked layers. (TaskDD81)
• After editing a hyperlink property in the Properties Bar, pressing the Escape would not back out of it. (TaskDD417 - SR 12066)
• Some comboboxes (e.g those in entity properties toolbar and properties bar) were sorted case-sensitive. (SR 12276)
• ACADLSPASDOC variable is taken into account when auto loading lisp files. (TaskDD201)
• Handling of multiple hyperlinks attached to entities was corrected. (TaskDD417)
• Improved memory allocation when loading large image files. (SR 12365)
• Added extra grip points on radial and diametric dimensions. (TaskDD451 - SR 12192)
• Improved loading process of application files and their dependent dlls
• Combo boxes in the Entity Properties toolbar and Properties Bar : when pressing a key, the selection jumps to the item in the list that starts with that letter.
• 'Properties' menu item (in the main menu and in the context menu) should not toggle the properties bar on and off but always turn it on. (SR 12384)
• Pressing cancel in the properties bar once will unselect the selected entity(ies). (SR 11757 and SR 12385)
• An error message appeared when attaching an image without position file. (TaskDD428)
• Commands cuiload and cuiunload were added. They redirect to menuload and menuunload (SR 12435)
• Image menu: support lowercase as well as uppercase in "$I=.." statements. (SR 12394)
• Mouse middle button : when mbuttonsnap is off, show snap context menu.
• Lisp and sds: sds_menugroup was implemented. (SR 12435)
• Lisp: LispEx.lsx is now always loaded at startup, immediately after LispEx.ext. (LispEx.lsx provides some basic Lisp utilities often used by Third-Party-LispApplications) (SR 12435)
• COM : added coclasses : AcadDocuments, AcadSelectionSets, AcadPreferencesFiles, AcadPreferencesOutput, AcadPreferencesSystem, AcadPreferencesDrafting, AcadPreferencesDisplay, AcadPreferencesOpenSave, AcadPreferencesSelection, AcadPreferencesUser, AcadPreferencesProfiles

Fixed

• Break command: The command option 'Same as first point' did not work. (TaskDD296 - SR 11705)
• Print failure if LUPREC=0, PrintScale=Fit and PrintedUnits:DrawingUnits = 1:0 (TaskDD427)
• Failure to snap to perpendicular of a line. (TaskDD472 - SR 12302)
• Customize dialog : fixed crash when adding an accelerator key into a cui file that had no 'AcceleratorRoot' element.
• SAVEFILEPATH is now saved in the registry correctly. (TaskDD479)
• Fixed lag between cursor position and snap tracking point. Snap tracking point corresponded to the previous processed cursor position. (TaskDD480)
• Printing : several errors in the calculation of the print area were fixed. (TaskDD431)
• Explode : it is no longer possible to explode xrefs. (TaskDD491 - SR 12378)
• The mtext editor did not display Chinese characters correctly. (TaskDD481 - SR 11815)
• Drawing Explorer: SHX fonts were not recognised as such when the file extension was uppercase. (SR 12404)
• Clicking button 'Zoom Window' during a real time motion launched the command 'wblock' (SR 12407)
• Truetype fonts were not found if the typeface name is empty. (TaskDD486 - SR 12328)
• Insertion point and scale of an image were wrong when using a TFW position file. (TaskDD428 - SR 11688)
• After ending the commands DIMEDIT and CHPROP, entities remained highlighted.
• Zooming of images lead to artifact pixels. (TaskDD418)
• DCL files with non-English but still single-byte characters were not loaded. (TaskDD501 - SR 12192, 12359, 12416)
• Crash when loading a dxf file which has ID's of non existing objects in the SORTENTS table. (TaskDD489 - SR 12392)
• COM: 'Select' method : filtering didn't work correctly. (TaskDD453 - SR 12225)
• COM: AcadApplication.ZoomCenter handled point/scaling incorrectly. (TaskDD510 - SR 12105)
• Lisp: it was not possible to quit some functions by pressing escape. (nentsel, nentselp, getdist, getcorner) (TaskDD483 - SR 12359)
• Lisp: EntMake Polyline created polylines with wrong Startwidth and Endwidth. (TaskDD509 - SR 12402)
• Lisp: a problem reading protected lisp files was fixed. (TaskDD497 - SR 12435)
• Lisp: a problem with (vl-cmdf) was fixed: the return status was always nil, instead of T (nil only in case of error) (SR 12415)
• sds_getappname() returned a wrong value on subsequent calls : it always returned the name of the first application that called it.(TaskDD473)
• The toolbar command required pressing enter to finish input on the command line. Now a space also ends the input. (SR 12435)
• Commands that prompt for a color, now accept global names as well as local (e.g. _Green)
• Partial menus : The corresponding .mnl file of a partial cui file was loaded twice during startup. (TaskDD201)

Version 8.0.11

12/07/2007  

New

• As opposed to V7, which was based on the (by now) old OpenDwg libraries, Bricscad V8 is based on the new DwgDirect libraries from the Open Design Alliance. This means that the Bricscad kernel was rewritten from scratch and that all commands had to be reimplemented... V8 is not a regular update, but the next generation of the Bricscad product: less than 30% of V7 legacy code has made it into the new V8.
• All toolbar icons have been redesigned.
• New Resizable Dockable Properties toolbar replaces old Entity Properties dialogs.
• New Resizeable Dockable Command Bar.
• New Drawing Explorer, extended with following functionality:
  • New Dimension Styles manager, replaces old Dimension Settings dialog
  • New Xref manager
  • New Raster Image manager using the FreeImage raster engine, supports .bmp, .jpg, .png, .gif and .tiff format
  • Drawing and Block librarian functionality
• New Settings dialog replaces Drawing Settings and Options dialogs, offering a consolidated overview of all system variables and settings, a hard-to-master section of the dwg world.
• New DDedit and Enhanced Attribute Editor dialogs.
• New UNDO implementation based on the native ODA DwgDirect undo infrastructure.
• Unicode: similar to AutoCad 2007, all string processing now is Unicode-based. This implies that the signature of some SDS functions was modified. DWGCODEPAGE now always is equal to SYSCODEPAGE.
• DRX offers similar functionality to ARX. Interested developers can contact us to obtain a dedicated SDK.
• SDS dlls are now loaded as DRX dlls: the entry point code has been modified similarly as in AutoCad ADS dlls. See sdsMigrate sample code.
• The threading model has been simplified, and the number of threads have been reduced to a minimum. SDS applications now run in the main thread, which solves the problem of undesired execution of client SDS code while a response from the main application is expected.
• COM: the IntelliCad based COM API is replaced by a new, AutoCad compatible COM API. The application part of the API is contained in axbricscadapp1.dll while the database part is contained in axbricscaddb1.dll. The corresponding type libraries are listed as Bricscad App 1.0 Type Library and Bricscad Db 1.0 Type Library. The VB syntax to create the application object (which is of type AcadApplication) becomes: myAppInstance = CreateObject ("BricscadApp.AcadApplication").
• Bricscad switched from using the IntelliCad .vbi VBA file format to the AutoCad .dvb format. Unlike .vbi files, which were linked to their parent dwg file, .dvb files are independent and can be used with no matter which drawing. Similar to the former CommonProjects.vbi, a default.dvb project is loaded on application startup, or created if missing. VBANEW, VBALOAD, VBAMAN commands were added to Tools/Vba menu.
• Lisp: a new Lisp engine has been built in, offering stunning performance improvement and extended functionality. VL, VLR, VLA and VLAX functions are supported now.
• Autoload.rx replaces icad.sds and contains the list of DRX and SDS applications that are auto-loaded when Bricscad starts up.
• On_start_default.lsp and on_doc_load_default.lsp replace icad.lsp and are the Lisp files that are autoloaded at application start and document load. These autoloaded files are managed by the Bricscad application. On_start.lsp and on_doc_load.lsp are the autoloaded lisp files to be created/maintained by users.
• Menus and toolbars now natively use the acad .cui (xml) file format
• New Customize dialog allowing to modify and create personalized menus, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts. This data is stored in .cui files. The Customize dialog also allows to edit Aliases and Shell Commands, stored in the default.pgp file.
• New Image Menu implementation. Image Menu definition and usage has been made compatible with acad. Support was added for Image Menu definitions contained in MNU files when converting the latter to CUI files.
• EATTEDIT command was added, it provides enhanced attribute editing. This command replaces DDATTE in the menu and toolbar.
• SHADEMODE command was added, it allows to switch between shading modes, e.g. to return from shaded mode to the default mode (2D).
• Creation of non rectangular viewports. The MVIEW command has a new option 'Object' to create a viewport boundary from an entity. Supported entity types are polyline, circle, ellipse, region and spline.
• Source code of two sample programs for batch plotting was added, one is in LISP and one in VBA.

Improvements

• Undo of consecutive real-time viewing operations (pan, zoom) has been grouped in a single undo step.
• Automatic creation of viewport on the first activation of a paper space layout.
• Command History: Up and Down keys now can be used to scroll through the command history.
• COMMANDLINE and COMMANDLINEHIDE commands replace CMDBAR - acad like.
• CLISTATE replaces WNDLCMD, WNDSCMD and WNDPCMD - acad like.
• Toolbar controls: now it is possible to add following controls to any toolbar: Layer combo, Color combo, Linetype combo, Lineweight combo.
• Toolbar command now accepts row and column value for docked toolbars.
• Menus now show icons besides the textual entries.
• improved support for SHORTCUTMENU system variable :
  • if bit 1 is set, the CMDEFAULT shortcutmenu is shown on right-click when nothing is happening. Otherwise, right-click behaves like pressing enter.
  • if bit 2 is set, the CMEDIT shortcutmenu is shown on right-click when a selection set is active. Otherwise, right-click behaves like pressing enter.
  • if bit 4 is set, the CMCOMMAND shortcutmenu is shown on right-click during a command. Otherwise, right-click behaves like pressing enter.
• Added support for Diesel expressions in menu definitions.
• The integrated VBA development environment was upgraded from version 6.1 to 6.3.
• Drawing Explorer: when a column header is clicked, the rows are sorted by column.
• Powerful Search functionality available in Settings dialog.
• Hatch pattern sample previews ("swatches") now are generated on the fly, .sld files for each pattern are no longer needed.
• MEASUREMENT setting now controls whether the ansi (default.pat) or metric (iso.pat) pattern definition file is used. The pattern file content has been updated.
• Double clicking on 'Paper' or 'Model' on the status bar now switches between tilemode, modelspace and paperspace (acad like).
• Entity Properties Toolbar fully integrated, i.e. no longer implemented as a separate external dll.
• Old intersection snapping mode was removed, its functionality is covered by extension and intersection snapping. From now on OSMODE value 4096 controls 'extension' snapping mode, like in acad. Snap option '_ext' was added to enable extension snapping from the command line.
• Enabled snap track lines starting from intersection and apparent intersection snapping points.
• EXPORT to bmp/wmf/emf now can use selection sets (instead of always using all entities).
• EXPORT command in command line modus now distinguishes between export formats using the filename extension.
• Depreciated system variables DIMASO and MAKEBAK were replaced by DIMASSOC and ISAVEBAK.
• New print options were added:
  • Plot object lineweights
  • Plot with plot styles
  • Plot paperspace last

Background Info

• When loading drawings in memory, they are no longer converted to the acad 2000 format, and the default file format when saving is now acad 2007.
• Many system variables were added in AutoCad 2007 & 2008. Though they are not yet obeyed, they are maintained intact.
• Menus, toolbars and aliases are no longer loaded from registry but read from file.
• Menus and toolbars now natively use the Acad .cui (xml) file format, existing .mnu files are automatically converted to .cui files.
• Command Aliases are no longer loaded from registry but read from the default.pgp file. The REINIT command reloads default.pgp.
• Restructuring for multi-user and multi-locale support: two extra levels, ProgramVersion and Locale, were added to our registry settings keys. E.g. for the en_US locale, keys now are found under Software\Bricsys\Bricscad\V8\en_US\
• Command Bar visibility, docking, position, size is managed the same way as the Properties Bar, and stored in the registry under the CurrentProfile/Toolbars sub key
• Support for LOCALROOTPREFIX and ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX system variables and folders has been added. Logs and template files now reside in the LocalRootFolder. By default it is C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Bricsys\Bricscad\V8\en_US\. Customizable program files like patterns, menus, aliases... now reside in RoamableRootFolder\support. By default it is C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Bricsys\Bricscad\V8\en_US\ .
• FontPath, HelpPath, MenuPath, HatchPatPath are replaced by the \userdatacache\support path stored in system variable SRCHPATH (acad like).
• When required, e.g. when a new user logs in, support files are copied from the central userdatacache folder to the LocalRootFolder and RoamableRootFolder.
• After an update installation, the Bricscad User File Manager tool will pop up and allow you to choose which of your user data files you want to replace by newer versions that came with the update.
• The Bricscad V8 installation folder (where files are copied to by the installer) is structured as follows:
  
  [installation folder] (executable program files, ...)
   |
   +- API
   |   |
   |   +- COM
   |   |
   |   +- LISP
   |   |
   |   +- SDS
   |   |
   |   +- VBA
   |
   +- Fonts
   |
   +- Help
   |   |
   |   +- en_US (readme.html, bricscad.chm, EULA, ...)
   |   |
   |   +- [other language] (readme.html, bricscad.chm, EULA, ...)
   |
   +- Samples
   |
   +- Support
   |
   +- Tests
   |
   +- UserDataCache (never used directly, used as a central storage to copy content from)
       |
       +- PlotConfig (content is copied to ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX\plotconfig)
       |
       +- PlotStyles (content is copied to ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX\plotstyles)
       |
       +- Support (content is copied to ROAMABLEROOTPREFIX\support)
       |   |
       |   +- en_US (cui, lin, pgp, pat, tip, ...)
       |   |
       |   +- [other language] (cui, lin, pgp, pat, tip, ...)
       |
       +- Templates (content is copied to LOCALROOTPREFIX\templates)
           |
           +- en_US
           |
           +- [other language]
  

Known Issues

• Custom hatch pattern files are not yet supported, though custom hatch patterns can be added in the default.pat and iso.pat files. Gradient hatches can be displayed and printed, creation facilities for gradient hatches will be added later.
• Performance: we have worked on performance to bring it to the same level as in V7 and will continue this effort as it is our goal to make V8 distinctly faster than V7. If you experience a noticeable performance drop versus V7 for a certain file, we would be grateful if you let us know and attach this file to a support request.

Please use the Support Request pages at www.bricsys.com to report problems.

Copyright

Copyright Bricsys nv.
All rights reserved.

This program is protected by U.S. and international copyright law as described in the license agreement.

Bricsys nv
Bellevue, 5 / 201

9050  GENT

Belgium