Wish List

Hi JMiller,

a possibility to do these calculations quite quickly would be to export these beams from the timber list to csv and use Excel to calculate the area, moment of inertia etc. This would save a lot of work.

For standard beam sizes, getting that information is, for the most part, trivial. For full cross sections, a timber list to excel would work great.

But, at a post connection, where there is a housing, tenon, and peg holes, the moment of inertia of the post is not the same as the full sized post, hence it has a lower bending capacity. Quantifying that number, which needs to be done in some cases, it time consuming, is all.

Or am I the only one who does that check?

Much obliged.

Right Click in D-Cam

How about a right-click menu in D-CAM such as in D-CAD with options to Move, Copy, Delete, Cut, Change Section, Mirror, Rotate? I understand that each of these commands have suboptions but to keep it simple it could default to Move/Cut grapically, and Cut General.

Also, it would be cool to have inherent Temp Points (hidden but there) at locations such as intersection of two lines, x line & plane, midpoints of lines and other strategic locations.

Thanks for all the great features already in place!
Steve.

Yes, I can see how in 3D you'd have to keep track of points all over the place for line intersections and that could get too cumbersome.

Any plans to release a 64 bit version?

When saving a ground plan drawing it would be really nice to save the window and door numbers and bring them into D-CAD automatically.

This way I could bring in my window and door list from project data and paste it in the drawing. Then the window and door numbers could directly relate to the list with no errors.

Hi All,

Here are a few items to add to the wish list that I have come accross that I think some users might benefit from:

• Being able to show openings as oppose to doors on Ground Plan – currently have to explain that it is an opening and not a door!

• Being able to manually name the MOS layers

• Able to set a blank MOS layer to ‘current’ – for example when inserting timbers directly onto a blank MOS layer – currently for the layer to be active there has to be an object on it

• Storing / saving manual names for beams in the description list

• Importing DXF 2D drawings directly into the Material Database – I have a large database and will be very time consuming transferring / drawing this into Dietrich’s

• Having the ability to draw curved profiles into the material database without having to break the curve into lines myself – for example a Torus skirting board – I am not able to display this accurately in an OpenGL render

• With respect to log cabins / homes – being able to auto define best fit log length with regard the raw material length – for example drawing from point to point a length of 20 metres but the log automatically split cuts at 6 metre intervals

Parts from other peoples wish lists that would be extremely helpful:

• Time tracker would be a great help

• To be able to have OpenGL and the D-CAM model open at the same time and be able to jump from one to the other

• When saving pictures or areas in OpenGL it would be useful to have a list of previously saved images appear before assigning a name to your storage

• To be able to zoom with the wheel mouse in D-CAM

I would just like to reiterate the thanks for all the great features already in place

Mike

Hi Mike

To take your points one at a time:-

Openings which are doors should display the leaf on the side and direction you defined when putting it in. Openings by definition will not have leaves.

There is a user defined MOS structure where you can create your own MOS's. I find this very useful to isolate individual parts of a building which may not necessarily be in the same building MOS. I guess the building MOS has to be automatically named to avoid errors - like having two ground floor wall 3's for example.

Not sure I fully understand this. You can create an empty user defined MOS and set it to current.

You can add manual names to beams in the designation field. It will store them within the project but not globally. I agree, this would be good and I have been asking for it for a long time.

Do you mean profiled beams etc. If so I agree again, currently you have to plot coordinates which is tedious and time consuming.

Yeah, curves will - for the foreseeable future - will alway be a series of straight lines (apart from assistant geometry and PlanCAD). Again a bit of a pain. In open GL you could try turning off the lines - right mouse click - render - option 3.

Yes this again would be cool - for all timbers actually, not just logs. I don't know if this is planned - perhaps Joachim will enlighten us!!!

On the second part of your post:-

I agree, a time tracker would be good. I have written a small Access database which records all my time very accuarately, and in all aspects of my work - not just using Dietrich's.

Release 6.0 when it comes may well help you as you will be able to edit in an Open GL mode.

Absolutely - been asking for this for ages - can't be that tricky, just a question of fitting it into the schedule I suppose.

You can zoom with your mouse wheel in Release 5.04. Try checking your mouse settings.

Hope some of this helps.

Cheers

Rob

Hi Planer

Yes, I had forgotten about that. I don't know what version Mike has - perhaps he has the full version, but didn't realise you can create user defined MOS's

Rob

I would find it useful to have an addition to the tenon tool (3-01-4) where the tenoned timber could be reduced in size at the joint as is common with American "square rule" layout system. Ideally there would be the option to have a reduction on 1, 2, 3 or all sides of the timber.

To clarify my last post, when there is any reduction in a beam, the tenon function does not recognize the reduction and creates a housing the full size of the beam (see attachment). I'd like to see the tenon tool recognize the reduction and make the housing the correct size for the reduced beam.

The ideal would be a housed tenon tool which also made the reductions in the beam. Maybe this is too much to do in one step...

Thanks,
Peter

Hi Peter,

I have put the "save" button for the user defined tenon on the wish list. We will also check how the reduction problem can be considered in the software, but it seems as if this will be very much effort.

I have been using Dietrichs for only 1½ month. But already from the beginning I was very happy for the program - it is really a very nice program!! I like it very much!!

I have a few things for the wish list at this moment - maybe I forgot about some things I have been thinking about, but then I can add it later. Some of the wishes can have been mentioned earlier.

1. Saving pictures from OpenGL in the same way as you save a Word file - by opening the directories on the computer and giving the picture a meaningfull name.

2. In wall design - in stead of opening wall list to choose a wall - maybe in a area at the bottom or at the right side of the screen, all walls are shown in a list of sheets - like the worksheets in Excel, where you can choose a wall directly. And the ability to choose between to views - a simple list wall 1, wall 2 etc. and a list with a small preview. And of course still the preview of the building where you can see where is the wall.

3. Exporting wall design to drawings: It would be nice if it was possible to select all walls or a number of walls (for instance in the worksheet list as mentioned in (2) ) - and then export all wall designs to drawings with the same predefined settings. That is settings as scale, the position of the wall drawing at the sheet, the position of timberlist etc. Because making wall drawings now take some time and is a boring job if you have many, many walls.... And maybe even while exporting drawings a automatic headline text in the predefined page header like: "Groundfloor, wall 1" or "xxxxx, wall 1" where you self can define "xxxxx"

4. Intelligense betwwen the program (ground floor plans, wall design t.ex.) - when you make changes t.ex. in the wall design the changes are automatic updated in the drawing. And maybe adding an automatic text "this drawing was changed 18-09 2006, 10:37" so when you look through the drawings you can see where you should add revisions if necessary.

5. The possibilty to copy walls (with timbers) directly in ground plan. The function could be like wall macro that is a nice feature, just more automatic and working in ground plan.

6. In wall macro to get a warning when selecting a wall to copy - if the two walls are not exactly equal - and then you can choose to skip the function.

7. Automatic doing shoulders from posts in both beams in double beams (or maybe even trible beams).

8. A more flexible way to change projectnumber and name.

Well I can't remember more wishes for now. But I must say that this software is already VERY GOOD!!! :applause:

I just thought about something more:

9. I don't like the Di-Cam view, it is (almost) useless, to my opinion. Why not put openGL view and Dicam together, to make it possible to work in the rendered mode

10. More flexible when working with user defined templates in D-Cad. Maybe I am not doing it in correct way, but in the list of drawings the name of all drawings is just A3 template or something like that - I would like the name I define in Dietrichs program to follow into D-cad. And in some cases the scale factor is not a choice.