Update Question

Hi Conrad

The goal is to have an upgrade every 12-18 months with new features for you. If there is a large feature that we are working on it will be the longer cycle. Our current goal is to offer V16 in Q1 of 2022. Work is already underway! Announcement about features happens 1 month before release.

I hope that helps!

G’day Conrad!
So what’s at the top of your v16 WishList?
avagr8weegend
Merv

Busy? yes, can’t grow forests fast enough – let alone mill it.
Just 1 WishList item.
History:
My memory predates DDR(0) so my recollection of the facts from several decades ago may be fuzzy. Should someone be able to prove otherwise, I’m happy to be corrected.
I was registered as a Builder by the Queensland Builders Registration Board in 1982. I’m a bricklayer but as a relative had a roofing business, much of my work was reroofing older dwellings as well as associated building maintenance. I produced my own hand-drawn plans for any job requiring local authority approval.
In late 1987 we decided to build a new home & use it for display purposes. As CAD was just beginning to make itself felt in the residential building market, I shopped around for someone to produce a 3D model and Working Drawings. When they were finished, I asked if it was possible to produce some perspectives, that I could use on a hoarding on the job site. My registration required that I have a sign on the site with my licence number & contact details so I intended using that to my advantage. However, he was only new to AutoCAD & wasn’t able to. In the meantime, I’d learnt that a friend who I’d not seen for over a decade was fabricating house frames as well as drawing plans. I contacted Ian Smith who asked if I could get a copy of the dwg file. I did, and he produced the perspectives for me. My signwriter then blew them up & coloured them. This is how I was introduced to AutoPLAN from Cedar Enterprizes in South East Queensland. It was a programme that sat on top of AutoCAD & customized it specifically for the building construction industry. Some years later, AutoPLAN was reviewed by Cadalyst magazine. The reviewers stated it had the most powerful Layer Management tools they’d ever seen. Because Autodesk wanted a monopoly on the prefix “auto-“ Brian Hunter renamed it CadSoft APDesign (Advanced Parametric Design).
Later, when I became a single dad, Ian offered to retrain me as a Building Designer to take advantage of my building industry experience. He had dabbled in customization in AutoLISP and had produced some routines to speed up the process of documenting how the designer intended to counter the wind loads imposed on a building. Brian then ported this functionality to C+(?).
In the early ‘90’s, (yes, around 30 years ago – and still running on MSDOS) this is what APDesign could do:
Once the 3D model had been created.
1. Calculate the Wind Loads on a particular Location after user had input basic parameters. This calculation was of necessity a little over-the-top (over-estimating the racking forces in each direction that had to be resisted) So I usually used the “Area of Elevation” method under AS1684. AP allowed me to over-ride it’s own calculations.
2. Insert virtually any type of bracing (whether it be ply, reinforced masonry, portal frames, steel cross . . . ) The customizable database allowed me to just pick an item, insert it and AP knew how much resistance it was worth, kept a running tally for each direction & even displayed how much more bracing was still required.
3. User could then insert tables for each direction showing the racking resistance required in that direction, racking resistance of each item (all of which were labelled for easy reference) and the total racking resistance achieved.
4. Should my client decide to swap in a larger opening (meaning the brace adjacent would no longer fit), AP would highlight that fact in plan view. I could then use the replace brace function to use a shorter one or the delete brace function then add another elsewhere. AP would then automatically update the labels and tables to reflect the changes. This made Quality Assurance very easy!
If only Envisioneer could provide the same functionality! If a quarter of their North American users saw the benefit in this, would Cadsoft?