Launched in September at the well-attended User Group Forums, held throughout major centres in South Africa and Namibia, the latest release of Caddie CAD software version 7 offers many new features to enhance productivity and ease-of-use. Buttons have also been added and changed as per user requests.

Caddie 7 gives the user a 40% saving on system resources.

* The dialogue boxes have been streamlined and a right click on an input box allows quick access to the 10 previous entries. Mixed units can be used on all the dialogue boxes - be they Cape feet, imperial units such as feet and inches, or metric units.

* Caddie supports file locking. This is crucial in a networked environment where drawings are shared by a number of users. This feature will ensure that drawings are not inadvertently overwritten. The system will warn the user that a drawing is already in use and only a copy of the drawing will be loaded.

* The properties of an element can be changed on one dialogue box, ie pen number, line style, layer, etc. Caddie now also supports 256 pens.

* The undo and redo functions have been added to complement the automatic back-up facility.

* The loaded image is saved with the drawing in the same directory and will be loaded when you open the drawing the next time.

* The cataloguing of drawings, symbols and referenced symbols has been enhanced so that the user can preview the drawings and display the drawing information such as scale, units, origin, paper size and surveyors mode setting.

* The symbol dialogue box has been greatly improved so that the user can preview or list the symbols and change the background colour for the symbol previews. The user can also place tabs of directories of often-used symbols on the dialogue box for direct access.

* A new text editor has been added to allow text find and replace, and spell checking by adding to your own text lists. Text parameters can be changed on the fly and entering an angle or indicating a line can change the text angle.

* Quick Stretch and Delete - The quick stretch and delete buttons have been added to create a shortcut to often used stretch and delete settings.

Caddie 3D release 1.1 is linked to the POV-Ray rendering package, a free-ware render engine. Drawings and symbols can be shaded and/or rendered to greatly enhance presentations. Symbol placement has also been streamlined.

Caddie is proudly South-African and is used by some 13 000 architects, engineers, surveyors and designers locally and in the United Kingdom. A free demo download of the latest version of Caddie is available on the Caddie website.

Caddie

(012) 665 0000

www.caddie.co.za