MICROGDS 9.0.21 RELEASE NOTES May 2007 ============================= MicroGDS 9.0.21 contains a number of fixes. It is provided as a patch which will upgrade MicroGDS 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, 9.0.3 or 9.0.4 installations. It will not work on a machine that does not already have version 9.0 installed; nor will it work on a machine that has already had MicroGDS 9.0.21, or any later patch, installed. It should not be used on the Japanese version of MicroGDS. PROBLEMS WITH MSP FILE EXTENSION -------------------------------- The supplied .msp file is a Microsoft Installer Patch. We have encountered some machines where the .msp file type has been set to "Microsoft Paint", so double-clicking MGDS9to9021.msp has started up a paint program! If this happens, run the patch installer by typing the command: msiexec /p mgds9to9021.msp EDUCATIONAL LICENCES -------------------- After applying the patch, users with educational licences will have to reset their licence details. To do this: Log in as Administrator Start MicroGDS On the Licence dialog box, change the licence type to Educational (e.g. Compact,Educational) Click OK Exit from MicroGDS PROJECT TEMPLATES ----------------- File->Preferences->Multi-user allows you to add or remove templates from the set available when creating new projects. If you have removed or replaced either of the two templates supplied as standard with MicroGDS, upgrading to 9.0.21 will undo your changes. You will need to repeat the changes. FRENCH AND GERMAN LANGUAGE SUPPORT ---------------------------------- MicroGDS 9.0.21 includes both French and German language support. French support was included in MicroGDS 9.0.4. German support was included in MicroGDS 9.0.3. In normal circumstances simply applying the MicroGDS 9.0.21 patch will cause MicroGDS to run with the appropriate language. If this fails to happen: 1) Uninstall MicroGDS. 2) Reinstall from your installation CD using the command: msiexec /i "X:\MicroGDS 9.0.msi" LANGUAGECODE=FR (where X is the drive letter where the MicroGDS CD can be found; and for German use "DE" not "FR") 3) Apply the 9.0.21 patch using the command line msiexec /p MGDS9to9021.msp LANGUAGECODE=FR IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES SINCE MICROGDS 9.0.4 ------------------------------------------- The way in which Objects and Assemblies are allocated link numbers has been changed so that each Object or Assembly has a number which is unique within its layer. This will only affect access of MicroGDS data through the API. Changes made to the Set Axes Angle may be modified if the set precision was too small. The angle is still displayed to the required precision but the angle is not changed as a consequence. Photos created from DWG data could have had the wrong scale. If, in a hidden line parallel projection, a line is seen exactly along the edge between two faces it was drawn instead of being hidden. Copying data to the clipboard which uses a linestyle that references itself no longer causes MicroGDS to crash. Attributes applied to an instance could be lost if that instance was burnt-in. Changing the number of decimal places on a dimension would not cause MicroGDS to prompt for the file to be saved. Burning-in an Orthographic/Front photo could cause clump edges to be drawn in the wrong linestyle. Burning-in an Orthographic photo could cause hidden clump edges to be drawn. MicroGDS would crash if Cad.DeletePrimitive is used in a DynamicPos event. Hidden lines could be drawn as DEFAULT when a Photo was created from a 3D Hide-Dotted view. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES SINCE MICROGDS 9.0.3 ------------------------------------------- Problems with handling out-of-plane dimensions when reading and writing DXF/DWG files have been fixed. If a linestyle has multiple hatch strokes in different colours, it could crash or error when exported to AutoCad with "not that kind of class". Backslash characters in text, when output to DWF files, could cause unpredictable effects in the AutoCad DWF viewer. MicroGDS could hang if it encountered an assembly which is an immediate child of a layer, and with the same link number as an assembly which is one of its immediate children. Renaming an object in the Properties window could cause a crash if used immediately after an implyable command whose first action is to clear the selection. Extra care is taken to flush Windows file buffers when writing MicroGDS data to disk (so providing extra safety in the event of, say, a power failure at a critical moment). Edit text with imperial units in force could make unexpected changes to wrapped text blocks. When opening DXF/DWG files, if a template exists a new window is created exactly as for the sequence File->New followed by File->Import. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES SINCE MICROGDS 9.0.2 ------------------------------------------- Creating a new object could cause a crash if focus was moved to a different window before giving the hook point. A crash that could occur when burning in a photo containing Cv7 text has been fixed. Exporting hidden line drawings to SVG and DWF could use the wrong colour for "colour = byphase" primitives. Using the Set Edit dialog box, then changing focus to another window could crash MicroGDS. Layer link paths (as introduced at MicroGDS 9.0 for assemblies) didn't work properly with instance assemblies. This affected secondary annotation functions. The Edit Text dialog box now has access keys. Copy and paste of dimensions did not always fix up the link numbers correctly (resulting in "broken" dimensions). The Environment Copy utility did not copy Scales, Angles, and Paper file location preferences correctly. MicroGDS could sometimes misinterpret the intended resolution of a tiff file, or incorrectly report missing tag values. Underscore characters caused problems when removing database links using the Project Administrator. Alter>Mirror command mishandled the case where the mirror line is parallel to the Z axis. Alter>Dimension>Split did not flag the layer as modified, so if it was the only change to the layer it could become lost when saving. Linestyles: - A bug that affected drawing object space hatching on objects inclined to the XY plane has been fixed. - Start and end pattern symbols in linestyles could be omitted due to incorrect "greeking". - Mitres on an offset pattern stroke did not always draw correctly. DWG/DXF Export: - "Null object pointer" could occur when exporting a photo of a window which has linestyle overrides, binding xrefs, with multiple layers of the same name existing. - Line primitives with a very slight inclination to the XY plane, when exported exploded, could arrive with a noticeable displacement from their correct position. - Exporting a text attribute with multiple lines could cause "Invalid Group Code". - CV6 linestyle symbols could be exported in slightly the wrong position. - AutoCAD has a maximum of 12 elements in a linetype, which was not being respected on export from MicroGDS. - Linestyle overrides on phases were not writing the correct line weight to AutoCAD layers. - Style mapping using acad.lin did not work correctly when exporting photos as bound xrefs. - The technique of specifying the desired AutoCAD layer name as a special MicroGDS Layer label stopped working (e.g. {DXF}test{DXF}). - Exporting instance assemblies without exploding could crash MicroGDS. - Exporting dimensions on phases with linestyle overrides could generate a "Null Object Pointer" message. - Using the Bind option, if the document exported had a photo referencing another document, styles were not always being read correctly from that external document. - If a MicroGDS linestyle needed to be translated as two AutoCAD hatch entities, it could fail with "Not that kind of class". DWG/DXF Import: - A problem importing Adobe Illustrator - generated DWG files referencing raster images has been fixed. - Handling of 2d polyline entities with oversized z coordinates has been improved. - 0 scale factors in block insertions are now treated as 1. International issues: - Text primitives with horizontal direction and an "@font" now use vertical layout, rotated anticlockwise by 90°. This is a very good fit with how these primitives look in MicroGDS 8 and earlier. - Wide characters in text primitives drawn with a variable-spaced "@font" are now positioned correctly, rather than about 20% too far apart. - Text in a Japanese font and Top justification could be exported to DXF in the wrong position. Customisation: - Cad.CurPriText, Cad.GetCurPriText, and Cad.GetCurPriExpandedText now handle Unicode characters correctly. - Cad.GetPrefBackgroundCol did not work properly. - CadSetSetXXX functions did not update the Properties window while the CadLink program was running (this caused performance problems). - The command line specified in an automenu.cfg file is now executed with the current directory set to that containing the automenu.cfg file. In particular this means relative paths in an automenu.cfg file are now interpreted as being relative to the folder containing the automenu.cfg file. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES FROM MICROGDS 9.0.1 TO MICROGDS 9.0.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ We identified a timing problem which could cause a crash, typically when a CadLink application was deleting data. This has been fixed. Object Get, when moving an object from one layer to another, could sometimes incorrectly fail to copy Object applicability properties. Drawing hatched linestyles when seen "end-on" could cause a crash. A problem which could cause a crash when offsets were incorrectly typed to the trace command has been fixed. A situation was found in which "hover-snapping" failed to reset the current position for the purpose of relative distances. Under some circumstances, MicroGDS produced a screen rather than printer resolution enhanced metafile in either Window>Export>EMF or Edit>Copy, Paste>Special>EMF. Under some circumstances Construct->Trace->Spaghetti could find the "wrong" polygons. The "Insert symbol" list in the New/Edit Text dialog box did not work with Japanese characters. A case was found where Construct->Array->Path, repeating an object around a curve, created the copies in the wrong place. MicroGDS could crash when starting the Line or Oline command with two hits in exactly the same place, followed by "Backspace". Cutting & pasting an apostrophe in the text editor could convert it to "&apos". DWG/DXF/DWF Export: - Exporting a document that has a photo referencing an external document now reads the style info from the external document. - Under some circumstances the position of exported text could be slightly offset. - Exporting a window referencing a window that in turn referenced a window could fail if the last window was deleted. - Invisible phases were sometimes not being exported to DWG. - Exporting to DWF now works in black and white if requested, and is more tolerant of slightly stretched, filled text. - We had a case of export to DXF failing with "Invalid group code" handling a multiple-line text primitive. - If you managed to create MicroGDS dimensions in which a line primitive was referenced by two text primitives (by injudicious copying), export could fail with "null object pointer". - We fixed an occurrence of "error getting normal to graphics" which could arise when units were larger than mm. - Vertical text in fonts like MS Gothic and MS Mincho could be the wrong size on export. DWG/DXF Import: - Under certain circumstances dimensions could be rotated. This is now fixed. - MicroGDS could error if supplied with a blank linetype name. - If a paper space view was a long way from the origin it could cause the resulting print layout view to display a different area of the model. - In certain circumstances instance processing was performed incorrectly resulting in a crash. - Importing nested blocks as assemblies could translate AutoCad non-constant attributes as object level rather than reference level. IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES FROM MICROGDS 9.0 TO MICROGDS 9.0.1 ---------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes the phase colour listbox in the Window Editor did not update correctly. Drawing the labels on snap guides caused a small "memory leak", which over a long enough session could cause a crash. Plotting with the "Rasterize within MicroGDS" option could create a spurious line down the edge of the plot. Copying an instance with no set layer in which to create it could cause a crash. Dimension->Arc Length did not properly honour Set Name settings. The sequence ^() in a text primitive is now correctly drawn as a ? symbol. The following DWG/DXF import problems have been fixed: - Some files could cause negative value dimensions to be created. - We discovered a case where a corrupt DWG file could crash MicroGDS. - Vertical text using Japanese "@fonts" was not handled correctly. The following DWG/DXF export problems have been fixed: - Vertical text using Japanese "@fonts" was not handled correctly. - The positioning of exported text has been modified slightly, to better adjust for the differences between the way AutoCAD and MicroGDS represent text size and position. - Blocks corresponding to linestyle endmarks are now created at the correct size. KNOWN PROBLEM PREVENTING APPLICATIONS FROM RUNNING -------------------------------------------------- There are certain conditions which will cause the installer to fail to register the COMDLG32.OCX library. This will manifest itself in an error saying that the library is missing when starting one of the sample applications. In order to correct the problem, you will need to register the library manually: 1) Start up a Command Prompt. 2) Enter the command: regsvr32 %SystemRoot%\system32\comdlg32.ocx MICROGDS 9.0 CADFILER AND GDI+ ------------------------------ MicroGDS 9.0 uses the Microsoft GDI+ library extensively. As a result we recommend that CadFiler programs which call the metafile functions (CF...MetaFile) must start up GDI+ before doing so, and close it down afterwards. If in doubt, include the startup and close down calls anyway as they are harmless if GDI+ is not otherwise used. See the example C++ code below. This problem does not occur when developing .NET programs (e.g. C# or Visual Basic.NET). // Declarations and headers needed #include using namespace Gdiplus; static ULONG_PTR gdiplusToken; // keep this between startup and shutdown // Before using any CadFiler functions, initialize GDI+ { GdiplusStartupInput gdiplusStartupInput; const Status s = GdiplusStartup(&gdiplusToken, &gdiplusStartupInput, NULL); // Check s==Ok here } // After using all CadFiler functions, shut down GDI+ GdiplusShutdown(gdiplusToken); CONTACTING US ------------- You can visit our web site at: http://www.microgds.co.uk Or you can contact us at: email: info@microgds.co.uk TRADEMARKS ---------- MicroGDS is a registered trademark of Informatix Inc