progeCAD support, tips and troubleshooting forum. progeCAD works very similar to some versions of AutoCAD. Moderated.

Moderators: caddit, Moderators

#1639 by RobinL
Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:55 pm
SAVE a file, shutdown the computer. Re-boot computer, open progeCAD 2011, then open the saved file to find that the draw order has been changed.

How do you stabilise the draw order?
#1664 by RobinL
Mon Oct 17, 2011 5:29 am
Each new session editing this drawing, I have to do about about 120
DRAW ORDER > BACK
to stop the hatch obscuring what was in view just before I closed the last session.

The CODE IS UNSTABLE. This needs to be fixed with a patch.

progeCAD 2011 will not round trip.
That is (SAVE/OPEN/SAVE/OPEN) should perform without corruption of the draw order of objects in the saved file.

** Just an _option_ or _variable_ to force the drawing of hatches to be always behind an associative boundary on OPEN would go a long way to reducing my dissatisfaction. **

At the moment, I can't afford to shut my progeCAD session down overnight. If I do, I find that I have about 30 - 45 minutes of draw order changes to make before I can progress in developing the drawing.

CADDIT> Please provide a constructive comment.
#1665 by RobinL
Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:08 am
After my last reply, I looked at the Developer's on-line reference documentation and the object model. But a documentation search doesn't find DRAW ORDER or ASSOCIATIVE HATCHING. The hatch object has an associative read-only property, but no method set it as part of an addhatch command. Nor can I find any documentation on changing the draw order.

In other contexts, I could iterate over the collection of objects in the drawing, test for a hatch object, find its associative boundary objects (if any) and if associative, then set the hatch to the back of these boundary objects as a procedure. I have written many 1000's of lines of VB over many years. I also searched the LISP documentation with same result. May be the documentation is not up to date?

I could then run this procedure immediately after opening my file and that would reduce my draw order issues.

Unfortunately, the documentation doesn't reveal elements to make this kind of procedure obvious.

Any clues?

#1666 by caddit
Mon Oct 17, 2011 10:25 am
RobinL,


I think that we have explained this a couple of times. The draw order problems, whether they be hatch-related, image-related or otherwise draw-order related in any way require a major code base update which will be released in the next version.

Also note that all of these basically draw-order related issues have been raised by comparatively very few of our other users.

#1680 by RobinL
Sun Nov 06, 2011 6:56 am
I hope that the next version has all the draw order quirks resolved.

When are we likely to see a version that we can test. I presume that any remaining bugs in draw order operation will get get quickly fixed in progeCAD 2012 as it will be on the the new codebase.

#1686 by caddit
Tue Nov 08, 2011 2:25 pm
Hello RobinL,


All that we can say for sure is that progeCAD 2012 will be released some time in . . 2012 :s

The problem is, as usual, that so many interconnected teams and technologies are being brought together with each new version - a major delay for one team means setbacks for all of the other teams involved (which is what happened with the 2011 release)

From feedback that we have so far 2012 release will be on time.

#1723 by riroko2
Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:43 pm
Just to mention that I've also got the problem of losing the drawing order repeatedly, so RobinL, you're not the only one!

It's disappointing to see a comment like:
Also note that all of these basically draw-order related issues have been raised by comparatively very few of our other users.


This means that not every customer is treated the same way. Only when people are crying out loud enough, things are being looked at.

I think this issue was mentioned in a previous post, and there it said it will be fixed in the new version using IntelliCad7. But ProgeCad 2011 is still based on IntelliCad6, and no explanation was given, why it's not using IntelliCad7.

#1726 by caddit
Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:37 am
This means that not every customer is treated the same way. Only when people are crying out loud enough, things are being looked at.


That's incorrect.

We listen to all customers equally regardless whether solving their problem will be viable in short-term or not. For example, we have duly reported your error to the developers, ran in-house testing, responded in timely fashion for this issue, etc.

We cannot give all problems equal priority (no one can) to the development team however - It's not even CADDIT's final decision to make. Normally the developers prioritize problems according to the number of requests, not if someone is "crying out loud enough" (to do so would, as you indicate, be unfair to the majority).

To turn this around further, I should mention that we can confirm that progeCAD 2012 is being tested as an IntelliCAD 7 build, although a release date is not fixed yet.

This will be an exciting framework for both design and CAD module development but IntelliCAD 7 also offered us a fair number of new challenges. However it's possible that your problem isn't IntelliCAD 7 related anyway, perhaps more to do with the PDF plotter, which was integrated. We have responded again to your update about the PDF printing on your other post.