http://www.bricsys.com/rss/html.jsp?channel=b4l&site=386 http://www.bricsys.com/rss/html.jsp?channel=b4l&id=1007&site=386 <h2>New</h2> <ul> <li>MCAD ASSEMBLY MODELING - (Platinum version only):</li> <ul> <li>Uses .dwg files organized in hierarchical structures of mechanical components to model complex products. Example projects are provided in the \Samples\Mechanical folder.</li> <li>MECHANICAL BROWSER: browse the component hierarchy.</li> <li>BILL OF MATERIALS: list top-level or bottom-level mechanical components used in a drawing.</li> <li>ASSEMBLY CONSTRAINTS: apply 3D constraints between faces and edges of different mechanical components.</li> <li>KINEMATIC ANALYSIS: use DmMove and DmRotate commands for real-time solving of forward and inverse kinematic problems.</li> <li>Assembly Modeling commands: <ul> <li>BmBrowser: toggle the visibility of the Mechanical Browser</li> <li>BmUpdate: update the hierarchy of mechanical components for the current drawing</li> <li>BmNew: create a new mechanical component as a new drawing document</li> <li>BmInsert: insert an existing mechanical component into the current drawing</li> <li>BmForm: form a new mechanical component and insert it into the current drawing</li> <li>BmDissolve: dissolve a mechanical component inserted into the current drawing</li> <li>BmMech: convert the current drawing into a mechanical component</li> <li>BmUnmech: convert the current mechanical component into a plain drawing</li> <li>BmHardware: insert a standard hardware part as a mechanical component</li> <li>BmHide: hide a mechanical component inserted in the current drawing</li> <li>BmShow: show a hidden mechanical component</li> <li>BmBom: insert the Bill-of-Materials (BOM) table into the current drawing</li> <li>BmXConvert: convert all X-Hardware solids present in the current drawing into mechanical components</li> </ul> </ul> </li> <li>3D CONSTRAINTS: <ul> <li>Constraints can now be imposed between sub-entities of block references.</li> <li>Constraints are now maintained on COPY/COPYCLIP/PASTECLIP/BLOCK/INSERT/EXPLODE/WBLOCK commands.</li> <li>DMANGLE3D: the axis for 3D angle constraints can now be chosen (automatically or manually), allowing to change the angle parameter over 180 degrees.</li> </ul> </li> <li>ARRAY dialog: offers control and feedback for the various array command settings.</li> <li>ATTRIBUTES: <ul> <li>ATTREDEF: command for redefining attributes of existing blocks.</li> <li>ATTSYNC: command for synchronizing attributes of block inserts whose attribute definitions were modified.</li> <li>BATTMAN: dialog for managing attribute definitions of existing blocks.</li> <li>Added support for <i>Locked position</i> and <i>Multiline</i> properties of attribute entities. </li> </ul> </li> <li>AUTOCOMPLETE: command line auto completion.</li> <li>CHAPOO has been integrated into BricsCAD. CHAPOO allows to upload, share, view, annotate drawings and documents. Chapoo will become functional when the servers become available online. <ul> <li>Commands: CHAPOOOPEN, CHAPOOACCOUNT, CHAPOOLOGON, CHAPOOLOGOFF, CHAPOOHOME.</li> </ul> </li> <li>DIMREASSOCIATE: command for (re)associating dimensions to existing entities.</li> <li>DIRECT MODELING: <ul> <li>DMMOVE/DMROTATE commands can now be applied to block references.</li> <li>DMREVOLVE/DMEXTRUDE: can now be applied to faces of solids.</li> <li>DMROTATE/DMREVOLVE: cylinders and other axial surfaces can now be used as rotation axis.</li> <li>DMSELECTEDGES: Quad command for faster 3d solid edges selection.</li> </ul> </li> <li>DYNAMIC UCS: dynamically align the UCS with faces of 3D solids when hovering over these faces during execution of commands. <ul> <li>UCSDETECT system variable controls activation of dynamic UCS detection.</li> <li>Press the F6 key or click the DUCS field on the status bar to toggle UCS detection On/Off.</li> </ul> </li> <li>HIDE: enabled the HIDE command in paperspace and added the 'Hide paperspace objects' option to the Print settings.</li> <li>MLINE: command for multiline creation. Support for snapping and grip-editing of multilines has been added.</li> <li>MLSTYLE: command for creating and editing multiline styles.</li> <li>PARALLELIZATION: enabled multi-threaded display regeneration, using multiple processor cores. MTFLAGS and MAXTHREADS system variables were added to control multi-threading aspects.</li> <li>PRINTING: <ul> <li>Enabled printing of layouts containing combinations of viewports using different visual styles.</li> <li>DISPPAPERMARGINS: system variable to control the display of the printable area.</li> <li>SR28726, SR29997, SR33003, SR33335, SR33890 and others - PRINT: implemented support for fine-tuneable printing of transparent images. When a problem is encountered while printing transparent images to a certain printer type, the ImagePrinting.xml configuration file in the plotter configuration folder now offers improved control by allowing to override the default settings with specific per-printer settings. The file contains documentation on how to use it.</li> <li>SR34409 - PRINT: added support for plot style's line-end caps and joints in plot and plot preview.</li> </ul> </li> <li>PUBLISH: <ul> <li>BACKGROUNDPLOT: system variable controls whether documents are published in the current session or in a BricsCAD session running in the background, thus allowing to continue drawing while printing.</li> <li><b>/pl</b> command line switch has been added for background (silent, without showing the main program window) publishing using DSD files. Format is '/pl [[path]name[.ext]]'. If the file name parameter is absent, the program just exits. If the file extension is absent, ".dsd" is added to the filename. File searching is done according to usual OS rules. If the DSD file is found, publishing is invoked according to the DSD file, and upon completion the program exits. When BricsCAD is started with the '/pl' switch, it ignores the SingletonMode setting thus allowing multiple instances.</li> <li>Page Setups from other drawings can now be imported.</li> <li>SR35875: added 'Move Sheet(s) Up/Down' and 'Reverse Sheet Order' buttons and functionality.</li> </ul> </li> <li>QLEADER: command and dialog were added. They allow to avoid specifying the same leader options over and over again.</li> <li>SHEET SETS: <ul> <ul> <li>combine multiple views on a sheet</li> <li>combine multiple sheets in a sheet set</li> <li>publish/eTransmit sheet sets in one go</li> </ul> <li>Commands: SHEETSET, NEWSHEETSET and OPENSHEETSET.</li> <li>System variables: SSFOUND, SSLOCATE, SSMSTATE.</li> </ul> </li> <li>TOOLBAR COMBO BOXES: have been added for layer filters, layer states and dimension styles. All toolbar combo boxes now have adjustable width.</li> <li>TOOLPALETTES, WORK IN PROGRESS: Toolpalettes have been enabled on linux. Mind that this is work in progress: follow up fixes for this platform will be needed.</li> <li>VIEWPORTS: <ul> <li>MVSETUP command <ul> <li>Model layout: set up the unit type, drawing scale factor and paper size.</li> <li>Named layout: create, align and scale a set of layout viewports.</li> </ul> </li> <li>ALIGNSPACE: command to adjust viewport angle, zoom factor and pan position based on alignment points specified in model space and paper space.</li> </ul> </li> <li>WALKTHROUGH NAVIGATION (for perspective views): <ul> <li>Alt + Left Mouse Button to 'walk' forward/backward and sideways, using the new RTWALK command.</li> <li>Alt + Middle Mouse Button to move up/down and sideways, using the new RTUPDOWN command.</li> <li>Ctrl + Middle Mouse Button to look around, using the new RTLOOK command. Shift + Right Mouse Button now brings up the snap menu instead of the former Ctrl + MMB combination.</li> <li>Ctrl + Home key sets the view direction to horizontal.</li> <li>Alt + Home key moves the target point to the center of the scene/drawing.</li> <li>Alt + Plus/Minus keys from the numeric keypad = increment/decrement movement speed, by modifying the new RtWalkSpeedFactor preference setting.</li> <li>Ctrl + Plus/Minus keys from the numeric keypad = increment/decrement rotation speed, by modifying the new RtRotationSpeedFactor preference setting.</li> </ul> </li> <li>WORKSETS: command for working with named groups of drawings.</li> <li>Upgraded RedSdk rendering engine to version 3.1.0.4</li> <li>Upgraded to V3.6 Open Design Teigha libraries.</li> </ul> <h2>Improvements</h2> <ul> <li>3D CONSTRAINTS: improved the DMANGLE3D initial angle value computation and dynamic dimension positions.</li> <li>RENDERING: improved RedSDK hardware detection, such that when hardware rendering is not possible, BricsCAD can switch to software rendering more gracefully.</li> <li>SELECTION: selection commands now need to explicitly set a ":N" option in order to be able to select nested entities.</li> <li>SHADING: improved gooch shading: <ul> <li>the backside of double sided OdDbFace objects was drawn in a dark color, unlike the front side of the object.</li> <li>dark objects were tinted green.</li> </ul> <li>SUBENTITY SELECTION: enabled selecting and TAB-cycling through faces and edges of nested solids in block references.</li> <li>WARNINGS: following warning messages can now be suppressed by checking a 'Don't show this again' checkbox: <ul> <li>message when moving entities to a frozen or turned off layer</li> <li>message when saving to a previous version that doesn't support some entities</li> <li>the 'WarningMessages' preference is used to store whether these messages should be shown or not.</li> </ul> </li> <li>SR27347, SR28240 - DIMENSIONS: added support for creation of associative dimensions using NEAREST snap.</li> <li>SR29126 - DIMENSIONS: the dimstyle's DIMLFAC was not applied when dimensioning a modelspace entity in paperspace.</li> <li>SR32046 - PRINT: improved print output for TTF fonts that require a non-standard approach for rendering the character glyph contours. The improvement is not applied when clipping is involved, e.g. with viewports or xrefs.</li> <li>SR32692, SR34446, SR35215 - OFFSET: added command options LAYER, UNDO and EXIT.</li> <li>SR33450, STARTUP DIALOG: in the startup dialog, dwg files that are not in the template path could be listed in the list of template files. Restricted the template file search to the template path and its subdirectories only.</li> <li>SR33737 - DIRECT MODELING: improved the behavior of DMPUSHPULL on models with constrained cylindrical fillets.</li> <li>SR34472 - LAYER STATES: when a layer state is imported, a message box is displayed asking the user if the imported layer state should be restored.</li> <li>SR34685 - SELECT: corrected an issue where multiple selection returned an error code when the user canceled the operation.</li> <li>SR34938, SR34975 - LAYER: the MATERIAL option was added for the -layer command.</li> <li>SR35159 - COPY: when pressing and holding down the Ctrl key while dragging a selection set, the selection set is copied instead of moved when the mouse button is released.</li> <li>SR35517 - DYNAMIC PROPERTIES: different visibility of same dynamic property with multiple entities selected was dependent on order of selection.</li> <li>SR35544 - APPLOAD: renamed "Select LISP or DRX Files" dialog to "Select Application Files". This dialog opens when clicking the 'Add...' button in the 'Load Application Files' dialog.</li> <li>SR36419 - 3DCONTEXT: when using the 3Dcontext command, a warning message will now pop up if hardware-based rendering is not supported.</li> <li>SR36711 - TABLE: table cell margins can now be set in the properties palette, when a cell or range of cells is selected.</li> <li>SR37306 - CUSTOMIZE DIALOG: when modifying the 'Help', 'Command' or 'Image' property of a menu item, toolbar button, keyboard shortcut, mouse button or double-click action, a warning message now appears that in fact the tool definition itself is being modified.</li> <li>SR37350 - MENU: the menu shortcuts stopped working after using MENULOAD without a dialog.</li> <li>SR37360 - LAYER: when the Layer Explorer opened for the first time, the layers were incorrectly sorted.</li> <li>SR37501 - ERROR ON OPEN: improved error handling when new document can not be created because of an unsupported template file format. Now a warning message is shown, and a new document is created from scratch</li> <li>SR37552 - WIPEOUT: it was not possible to use shortcut "of" in the WIPEOUT command. Shortcuts 'on' and 'off' have been added to the frame option of the wipeout command.</li> </ul> <h2>Fixes</h2> <ul> <li>V13 contains hundreds of fixes that have become available by upgrading to V3.6 of the Open Design Teigha libraries. These fixes are not listed here.</li> <li>Instead of loading the FreeType library from the system directories, it is now correctly loaded from the custom installed version.</li> <li>DELCONSTRAINT: not all constraints were deleted on two closed polyline triangles having constraints on them. Also, Delconstraint performance has been improved for drawings containing a large number of constraints.</li> <li>DIRECT MODELING: DMPUSHPULL reference faces were incorrectly sorted in the TAB-cycle.</li> <li>DRAWING EXPLORER - Page Setups: an exception occurred in scenario: Drawing Explorer/Page Setups > Page Setup dialog > Preview > close using the Esc key.</li> <li>DRAWING EXPLORER - Views, Background combo: when the 'Image' option was selected the first time, a bogus error message box appeared - "Can't load image from file ''".</li> <li>LAYERFILTERS: instead of color names, color indices are now stored in layer filter definitions.</li> <li>TEXTSCREEN: upon startup, the textscreen should not appear even if WNDLTEXT is on.</li> <li>SR16294 - DRAWING EXPLORER, Images: disabled 'Rename' option in 'Edit' and context menu (Images cannot be renamed).</li> <li>SR19619, SR30249, SR35892 - RASTER IMAGES: when interpreting image geo referencing world files (such as .tfw and .jgw files), the image origin, scale and rotation were incorrect.</li> <li>SR21745 - CURSOR: aperture box was visible when no command was active. <li>SR23409 - DIMARC: creation failed for arcs at large coordinates.</li> <li>SR24910 - RASTER IMAGES: OpenGL graphics device always used black foreground color for bitonal images, instead of the color of the entity.</li> <li>SR25031 - DIMENSIONS: DIMARC entities in layouts ignored DIMLFAC value.</li> <li>SR28120 - VIEWS: on creation of a view, when the ratio between the view's width and height was greater than the ratio between screen width and screen height, the view's height was adapted and stored accordingly. Now the value stored for the view height is no longer modified, but when the view is set current, the viewport height will be adjusted according to the screen size.</li> <li>SR28616 - RASTER IMAGES: when an image was inserted at large coordinates, the image disappeared and reappeared while zooming in/out.</li> <li>SR29800 - PROPERTIES BAR: the scale of blocks set to 'Scale uniformly', could not be modified from the Properties Bar.</li> <li>SR30056 - BLOCKS: an exploded block, inserted from disk, was not displayed during dragging.</li> <li>SR32206 - ATTEDIT DIALOG: attributes were not updated in the drawing upon pressing the Apply button.</li> <li>SR32918 - 2DCONSTRAINTS: angular constraint for an orthogonal pair of lines or points gave undesirable result.</li> <li>SR33007 - CONSTRAINTS: glyphs that depend on a UCS to make sense now show a different bitmap if the current UCS is not parallel to the one they were created in. For example, if a line was made horizontal in WCS and then the UCS is changed to be at an angle, the line appears to be at an angle to the UCS-X (but horizontal in WCS), thus causing confusion. This is addressed by showing a different horizontal bitmap with small blue UCS axes.</li> <li>SR33021 - DIMENSIONS: associative rotated dimensions disappeared (collapsed) after modification (e.g. STRETCH) of the dimensioned entities.</li> <li>SR33277 - DWGPREFIX: when a new/unsaved drawing is opened, the DWGPREFIX variable should point to the BricsCAD startup folder.</li> <li>SR33898 - DISPLAY: the cursor pickbox was not undrawn when a command was started, it was undrawn only after a mouse movement occurred. This was not always reproduced, usually it occurred with commands without pop-up menu (e.g. start of LINE).</li> <li>SR33919, SR34562, SR34897, SR34898 - HATCH: fixed TRIM problems.</li> <li>SR34472 - LAYER STATES: after importing a layer state file (.las) and then switching to the Layer view in the Drawing Explorer, the layer overview briefly displayed the new layers and then got reset to show only layer 0.</li> <li>SR34499, SR35307 - PDF EXPORT: when arc segments of a polyline were exported to PDF, they were represented as a chain of lines instead of arcs. <li>SR34651 - HATCH: fixed calculation of hatch area for boundaries containing overlapping curves.</li> <li>SR34686 - DRAWORDER: was undesirably changed in a group during selection preview highlighting.</li> <li>SR34711 - PRINT: some holes in solid hatches were ignored and filled.</li> <li>SR34776 - 2DCONSTRAINTS: creation of constraint glyphs on drawing open can take long in drawings containing many constraints. Now glyph creation is deferred till actually required.</li> <li>SR34906 - SNAP: calculation of CENTER snap for polylines is made more precise for polylines with large coordinates.</li> <li>SR35036 - DISPLAY: attribute objects on layer "0", with BYLAYER color, were displayed with wrong color after one of the layers was frozen in the PS viewport (regression in V12).</li> <li>SR35091 - GRIP-EDIT: when an entity was edited by grip points, it disappeared when zooming with the mouse wheel.</li> <li>SR35297 - FILLET and CHAMFER: option POLYLINE gave incorrect result for polylines with non-zero global width.</li> <li>SR35313 - CRASH: a crash occurred when working with a drawing containing a layer with an invalid material id.</li> <li>SR35320 - RASTER ENGINE: <ul> <li>white line artefacts occurred at the borders of adjacent (clipped) images.</li> <li>when zooming out images disappeared too soon.</li> </ul> </li> <li>SR35356 - SNAP: the marker size was dependent on the size of the view in perspective mode.</li> <li>SR35372 - UNDO: undo chain got broken after AUDIT of blocks.</li> <li>SR35415 - AUDIT: added missing linefeed in audit output.</li> <li>SR35420 - DYNAMIC BLOCKS: draw order inside dynamic block got lost after editing a dynamic block property.</li> <li>SR35427 - TABLE: the Table Dialog did not remain modal after opening and closing the Table Styles drawing explorer. Also improved setting Table gridlines in the Table Styles drawing explorer</li> <li>SR35552 - STRETCH: failed for user-provided scenario.</li> <li>SR35568, SR35764 - REFEDIT: when an entity was removed from the working set in REFEDIT session, it was no longer displayed.</li> <li>SR35572 - REFEDIT: a crash occurred when executing UNDO after all entities were erased during a REFEDIT session.</li> <li>SR35580 - BIGFONT DISPLAY: accuracy was insufficient.</li> <li>SR35608 - SCALE LIST EDIT: on resizing the scale list edit dialog, the list of scales expands according to the available width. The entries in the list also expand according to available width. Before this fix, the entries took up only about half the width of the list and the list did not get wider when resizing the dialog.</li> <li>SR35752 - LINE: construction of line tangent to two arcs has been fixed.</li> <li>SR35770 - APPLICATION WINDOW SIZE: when the application window was not maximized, WNDSMAIN window size was stored in registry 1 pixel too small in both directions.</li> <li>SR35775 - TOOLPALETTES: forced the display color of blocks to always use black regardless of background color.</li> <li>SR35815 - REFEDIT: draworder was not saved by REFCLOSE/SAVE.</li> <li>SR35822 - CHAMFER: display of chamfer angle was in radians, while it should be using the current angle format (AUNITS).</li> <li>SR35834 - PEDIT: option multiple, option join: the [Jointype] keyword could not be translated in localized versions.</li> <li>SR35876 - TEXTFILL: when printing an area containing clipped parts of texts, Textfill = OFF setting was ignored.</li> <li>SR35921 - TABLES: could not change multiple cell values via Properties Bar.</li> <li>SR35935 - EXTRUDE: operation failed for closed polylines with identical start and end points.</li> <li>SR36010, SR36712 - MENU: after loading a partial cui file with MENULOAD, accelerator keyboard shortcuts no longer worked.</li> <li>SR36036 - PLOT: corrected the prompt for saving changes to print settings to a layout.</li> <li>SR36042 - DYNAMIC BLOCKS: when changing dynamic block parameters, block attribute visibility was not set correctly.</li> <li>SR36047 - 3DFACE: option "_invisible" was rejected for the second edge, if the first edge was also defined as "invisible".</li> <li>SR36163 - STRETCH: some of the line endpoints within the crossing window were not picked up by the stretch command.</li> <li>SR36183, SR36206 - DISPLAY: polylines with thickness and dashed linetype were displayed with zero lineweight when viewed from the top.</li> <li>SR36367 - HATCH: area calculation incorrectly gave a 0 result for a hatch contained in a user-provided drawing.</li> <li>SR36462 - PRINTING: when Print settings in the Print Preview was clicked, the Page Setup dialog was opened instead of the Print dialog.</li> <li>SR36535 - BLOCKS: the block description was not transferred when the Drawing Explorer was used to populate a toolpalette with blocks.</li> <li>SR36664 - UNDO: when a drawing contained Light object(s), and _undo group/begin/end was used, a crash occurred.</li> <li>SR36764 - VBA: after loading a password protected dvb project with the VBA Manager, the VBA IDE was disabled.</li> </ul> <h2>Applications</h2> <ul> <li>LISP: (setvar "HPNAME" ...) has been improved to better suppert user-type hatchpattern names.</li> <li>SR34077 - BRX: negative GSmarkers < -1 of custom entities were not preserved.</li> <li>SR37194 - DCL: if no cancel component was defined in a dcl dialog, the Close button in the title bar and the escape key behaved in the same way as the Ok button. From now on the Close button and the escape key will be disabled if the dcl dialog has no Cancel component.</li> <li>SR37314 - DCL: a dcl file containing a non breaking space character could not be parsed. The non breaking space character (hex code "\xa0") has been added as an allowed whitespace character to our dcl parser.</li> <li>SR37334, SR37446 - LISP: fixes a problem with strings stored by (vlax-ldata-xxx) functions. When drawing is saved, a wrong string encoding was used, which caused invalid (vlax-ldata) strings, when drawing is opened again.</li> <li>SR37403 - LISP (read-char file): if a text file contained a 0x1A value ('EOF' character), it was not possible to read any character following after this 'EOF'.</li> <li>SR37411 - LISP,SDS,BRX: during a "saveComplete" EditorReactor event, DWGPREFIX did not return the correct path of the file just saved.</li> <li>SR37651 - LISP,SDS,BRX: correction for setvar("HPNAME", ".") - it is no longer rejected with an error, but instead clears the HPNAME value.</li> </ul> Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:34:44 UTC