Cadvance 6.5 Technical Note 2/1/96 Courtesy of BayCAD Services Your new Cadvance Version 6.5 offers several new features: Cadvance 6.5 now has added support for over 20 raster image formats. Please see TECHNOTE.WRI for a complete list of the supported scanned and raster image formats. Weighted lines are now visible on-screen. CADVANCE objects (except text) drawn with an associated weight property may now be displayed with a visible thickness that you can specify under Options/Miscellaneous. The value you place here is to satisfy your particular resolution. For instance, if you put a value = 1/2" this will probably display well on a 1024 x 768 system, but would display with too much weight if your resolution were 600 x 400. We recommend that you experiment by creating a TESTPLOT.VWF that includes a variety of line colors, weights, and styles. Put various lines of Cad Text in too - this file will come in handy when setting new Print parameters. Who needs visible line weights? Those of you who have previously used the line weight feature in Cadvance will be happy to know that you can now (once again, for you old timers) see them on the screen. This visible weight does not, however, travel through the clipboard to applications such as Word. It will travel from file to file in Cadvance, but to see the weight in a new file you've pasted to, you must re-select Options/Miscellaneous and OK, then F5 to redraw and have the software make the weights visible (a little quirk). If you are one of the many users who have always weighted colors at the plotter, you probably won't want to use this feature immediately (if ever). Please see new printing options below. Improved all dialog box with a 3D look (this is what you need the CTL3.DLL file for). By the way, I found a copy of this file in my WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, left it there, and it works just fine. A new File/Print dialog box interface and a new Print/Color dialog box that gives you the ability to map drawing color-to-weight for printing. You can now specify line and text weight when printing to all devices, including raster/inkjet type printers/plotters. This means that those of you who have been using that clunky old HPGL driver to link pens to colors can now use the HPGL/2 drivers that came with your plotters (at last!). For those of you with color inkjets, you can now utilize all 15 colors! Each of you is going to have to create and save new INI files for your particular printing preferences. The key factor here is the Print line weight value that you specify. After you install your driver in the Control Panel, re-select the printer in Cadvance's File/Printer Setup. Then in File/Print, the driver will specify a default line weight of say .0033. You must do some experiment plots with that TESTPLOT.VWF file you created to determine what you prefer as the thinnest line value. I found .01 to be ideal on my LaserJet, and others are happy with values like .11, but you need to decide on your particular printer/plotter. Additionally, this value also influences Cad Text (hooray!!!) and it is saved in the INI file (hooray!!!). You will also notice an additional column on the File/Print/Color page. The value you place next to a color is a multiple of the line weight you specified on the previous page. As an example, let's say you select the Black on White button, and change the value next to the Screen Color Red / Print Color Black to = 2. On the plot, all Red entities on the screen (including Red text) will print out twice as thick in Black. After you've gotten all the settings where you want (and prior to printing), you can save them to the current INI by simply selecting the button on the print page. Everything you set will be retained in the INI. You can have multiple INI's for various printers or projects, too. To save a new INI, you must print the file, then go to File/Save As and change File Type to Configuration (INI), give it a new name and OK. To utilize another INI, simply File/Open it and re-select the printer in File/Printer Setup. If you make any changes to the File/Print dialog box, you can select the Save INI to Current Printer button. Additional notes: CADVANCE will run under Window 95 and quite quickly, too! Be careful with new drivers, some are still quite awkward in '95. Also, remember your DOS filenaming conventions - only 8 characters in a filename. If you are upgrading from CADVANCE 6.0 and may want to restore your CADVANCE 6.0 environment, please backup the following files: CADVANCE.EXE, CAD1.DLL, CADMSG.DLL, CAD.HLP, & STRINGS.DLL. So far, we have found no real problems with 6.5, but we recommend that you hold off on the upgrade until you complete work on a current project. This is due to changes you must make in plotting and raster file formats that you may not want to deal with until you have the time. There is a Cadvance Toolbar Manager v1.01, from Calibre included with your Version 6.5. The README.TXT file contains an overview, installation instructions, operation instructions and support. Please, DO NOT USE THE ONE ON YOUR DISK, it has a bug problem. The repaired program can be found under the same name in the Cadvance Library on Compuserve as of 2/20/96. A new Cadvance Keyboard Overlay has been included with Version 6.5. The file F-KEYS.VWF is a CADVANCE drawing that represents the keyboard function keys. Just bring the file up in CADVANCE and plot it (F-KEYCAD.VWF is the same drawing with CAD text used instead of TrueType). A new Cadvance toolbar has been included for your use. The file is called: TOOLBAR.INI it can be found on the second installation diskette. To replace the toolbar in your CADVANCE.INI file with the new toolbar, simply open the TOOLBAR.INI using Notepad, select the whole file and copy it to the Windows clipboard. Then open your CADVANCE .INI file, select the tool bar section and delete it. Replace the tool bar section with the new toolbar section with EDIT/PASTE. We hope that this information assists you in utilizing your new Cadvance Version 6.5. If you have any questions or problems with the installation, please don't hesitate to call us at (415)453-3828 or fax us at (415)456-4684.