Recent Enhancements 3.1-26

These enhancements were part of Release 3.1-26 published on July 2, 2012.

Change Project Folder

It’s often useful or necessary to change the folder where a project’s drawing files are located.
In the past this required backing up, deleting, moving and restoring the project.
Now it can be done more simply.
You can change the folder for a project before or after you have moved the drawing files.
If you do it before, the drawings will be moved for you.

Just press the “Move” button in the Project Properties Window then select (or create) the new folder. The Move Project Folder window will be displayed. The project drawing files are scanned to see where they’re currently located. The counts of drawings found in various locations are displayed.

When you’re ready, press the “Move Files” button to complete the move.

If any errors are encountered in the scan or the move, you can press the “View Errors” button to review them.

Joist Extensions

Joist extensions have all the functionality of normal (formula) extensions, plus they calculate and display a series of parallel members inside the measurement. The Joist extension can be used for more than joists. Any measurement that needs a layout of parallel members can use it. For example, beams, rafters and rake walls. The following parameters can be specified for a joist extension:

  • The on-center distance between the members
  • The length multiple the members should be rounded up to.
  • The pitch of the members. This is used when laying out members on a sloped surface such as a roof.
  • The orientation point for the members (horizontal and vertical)
  • The rotation of the members

Polygon Annotation

Polygon annotations are a series of points that are connected together by lines.
A line is also drawn from the last point to the first.
You can change the polygon line color and fill color.
You can use Disconnected Points to include several polygons in a single annotation.

Convert to TIFF

There are three situations when we need to convert files from multi-color
files to black and white files:

  • When PDF files are converted to or saved as TIFF files and the user preference for TIFF conversion is Black/White
  • When files are converted for Pattern Search
  • When files are converted for Drawing Compare

During the conversion, colors other than black and white must be converted to either black or white. How this is done is specified separately for the three cases above.

As shown above, each case has a slider bar, a “Before” image and an “After” image. The Before image shows the different levels of gray that might be found in a drawing. (Other colors are converted to an equivalent shade of gray before the gray-to-black/white conversion.) The After image shows whether the gray shade above it will be converted to black or white.

As you move the slider to the left, darker and darker shades of gray will be converted to white. As you move the slider to the right, lighter and lighter shades of gray will be converted to black.

Default Hyperlink Description

The default name for hyperlink annotations is set to the name of the destination drawing. The description is displayed as a tool tip. (A future enhancement will offer an option to display the description.)

Create Layer during Trace Edit

You can now create a new layer when creating or editing a trace.

Repeat Dimension Annotations

A new user preference allows you to quickly create multiple dimension annotations. If this option is set, when you add a dimension annotation, the first two points create one annotation, the next two create another, etc. This continues until you change to another mode (such as Select).

Stand-alone program to convert data

Some software upgrades require a database conversion (including this one). For multiple users sharing a common eTakeoff database, the conversion must be carefully coordinated. It can also take a long time to convert the database across the network (up to one minute per project). To facilitate this conversion, eTakeoff now includes a utility program to perform the conversion directly on the server.

Earlier Enhancements

Click here to see earlier enhancements.