Overview

Smart Menus

DesignCAD offers smart menus like those found in Microsoft Office®. Initially presented with a shortened list of available menu commands, to help reduce screen clutter, the menu can be expanded to show all items by clicking on the double arrows at the bottom of the menu. Great for learning, this option can be enabled or disabled depending on the user's preference.

Easy to Use 2D Drafting & Design

• Intuitive yet sophisticated editing tools, advanced geometric construction capabilities, drawing short cut keys and complete layer management make 2D drafting a breeze.

• Usability Tools
• Workspace Tools
• Macros
• Drawing Tools
• Editing and Measuring
• Dimension Tools
• Groups, Blocks, Symbols and more!

Associative Dimensions
Associative dimensions will automatically update as you change the size of the object they are associated with. For example, if a radial dimension is associated with a circle, when you change the radius of the circle using the Info Box, the associated radial dimension is automatically updated to match the new radius.

Layers
DesignCAD utilizes layers that can be independently switched on and off in order for users to have a better visibility of the drawing. For example, if one just needs to see the outline of the component, he or she can switch off other layers containing center lines, dimensions, etc.

DesignCAD can also lock layers, so that they are visible but not editable, in order to prevent accidental changes to the locked layer. Some features of objects, such as color or linestyle, can also be controlled on a per-layer basis, so for example objects drawn in a particular layer can automatically have a certain color and/or linestyle applied. DesignCAD allows users to switch these by-layer settings on or off at will, or allow the settings to change automatically as you switch to and from layers with color or linestyle presets.

The Layer Options dialog box has been redesigned in DesignCAD v22 to maximize the amount of layer information displayed. You can resize the dialog box to show more layers and longer layer names, columns can be hidden, resized, or rearranged, and new capabilities have been added to Show Marked Layers, Hide Marked Layers, Lock Marked Layers, Unlock Marked Layers, Clear Marked Layer Colors, Clear Marked Layer Line styles, and Clear All Layer names.

Added Flexibility when Sharing Your Work

• New Print Section - Print only a specified region of the drawing.
• Print Scale Options - Select from a standard set of print scale options or create your own
• Info Box - Roll out or more permanently open the info box to display the details of any selected object to help you speed through the design options, even if you’re still learning
• User Notes – Add notes to any drawing
• Save for Sharing - When you save a drawing, all files referenced externally (textures, symbols, images) are saved to a subfolder with the host drawing’s name.
• Paper Space Mode – Create a view frame and choose a specific scale or enter a custom view frame scale.

AutoCAD® DWG/DXF Compatible
Work with the latest AutoCAD® files. Import/Export AutoCAD® files through 2012 and enjoy excellent compatibility with AutoCAD® layouts and PaperSpace, plus support for AutoCAD® layers, linestyles, views, and blocks in both DXF and DWG file formats. DesignCAD even offers limited support for Architectural Desktop (ADT) objects, which are recognized and exploded to DesignCAD equivalents.

DesignCAD imports DWG, DXF, WMF, HPGL and XYZ files and exports to DWG, DXF, WMF, HPGL, WPG and PDF.

DesignCAD also supports several image formats including .BMP, .TIF, .JPG, .TGA, .WMF, .PSD, .AWD, .EPS, .WPG, .TIF, .PCX, and .PNG

Features

New Print Section Command
This new command allows you to specify a rectangular subsection of the drawing to be printed. Once the region is selected, the Print command opens, and only considers the area you chose when calculating overall size, scale, and other print features.

Enhanced Print to PDF
Printing multiple panels to PDF format now results in just one multipage PDF file.

New Double Line to Vector Command
This new command converts the selected double-line object(s) to normal vectors using the currently-active line style and line width. Note: This command differs from the similar command Double Line to Wide Line, which converts the selected double lines to wide lines of the same width as the original double lines.

Larger, more versatile Layer Options dialog box

• New Layer Options dialog box has been redesigned to maximize the amount of layer information displayed.
• Dialog box can be resized to show more layers and longer layer names
• Unwanted columns can be hidden by right-clicking on the column headers
• Right-clicking on the body of the layer list provides a context menu which exposes commands that were formerly presented as buttons
• New capabilities have been added to the Layer Options dialog box, including:
• Show Marked Layers
• Hide Marked Layers
• Lock Marked Layers
• Unlock Marked Layers
• Clear Marked Layer Colors
• Clear Marked Layer Line styles
• Clear All Layer names
• The Save as Default button now saves the layer names along with the layer presets
• New Coordinate bar field width option

This option lets you specify the width (in pixels) of the coordinate bar’s numeric fields. This can be handy when you want to display more digits, are displaying coordinates in feet and fractional inches, or are using a large display font. The minimum value is 48 pixels, while the maximum will vary depending on the width of your display.

New Layers List additional width

This option lets you specify how much extra width (in pixels) to add to the layer drop list in the Info box and Layer Toolbox relative to the width of the collapsed layer control. Increasing this width allows you to see longer layer names.

Improved Hatch, Hatch Line, Hatch Fill
A new “Same As” button in the Hatch dialog box allows you to easily match the style of the hatch being drawn to an existing hatch entity.
Improved Import and Export

The “Missing Xref” warning dialog now offers options to skip some or all missing xrefs when importing dwg files. We’ve also improved the export of paperspace layouts to dwg format. In addition, DWG/DXF export now exports layer names longer than 32 characters.

Improved Fillet command
A new, more robust algorithm has been implemented for filleting one arc against another. This should result in less ambiguity when filleting arcs where multiple solutions are possible.
Improved Linear Dimensions

We have reduced the gap between the arrow “tail” and the dimension text when the text and arrows are forced outside the extension lines. We have also added a snap point to the left-side arrowhead to enable repositioning the dimension line using that arrowhead from Point Select Mode.

Improved Section Trim, Section Cutoff and Section Cut by Line
The Section Trim, Section Cutoff, and Section Cut by Line commands now also affect hatch objects; hatch entities were previously ignored by these commands.
New File Wizard command

New options have been added to Ignore Shading Flags and Ignore View Data, just like they were already present in the Open dialog.

Improved Repeat Last Command (F3) and Undo Command
DesignCAD now longer records the various Zoom commands in the F3 and Undo command buffers. This makes it easier to repeat drawing commands even if a zoom in or out was necessary to see more details. All Zoom commands can still be undone separately using Zoom Previous.

Enhancements to many commands using “Selected only” checkboxes
The last state of several “Selected entities only” checkbox is now remembered, so the next time you run that command with something selected, the checkbox is checked or not depending on your last choice when something was selected. If nothing is selected, the setting is ignored.

Additional Enhancements

• Improved Arrow and Dimension commands - New algorithm for drawing arrows with a line width results in an arrowhead that points where it should and ends in a sharp point.
• Improved Dimension Arc - Improved appearance of the extension lines.
• Plus, corrections have been made to bugs found in DWG/DXF export, fillet command, rotate command, coordinate bar, print preview, and gradient hatches.

Requirements

System Requirements
Recommended system requirements: Microsoft® Windows® XP (SP2), Vista, or Windows® 7; 500Mhz or higher processor; 750 MB free hard drive space; 512MB RAM Windows® XP, 1 GB RAM Vista; DVD-ROM drive; Video Card with OpenGL driver and 64MB RAM; Color monitor with 1024x768 resolution or higher; Windows-compatible mouse; Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher, Mozilla Firefox® to access online features (Optional). For more information visit www.IMSIdesign.com.