Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1997 - 68

cornerblocks forward. Then I noticed that the frame layer was above
cb&ks layer in the layer list. Once I changed tllat relationship so that frame
was below cb&ks, evel)1hing \iewed COlTectJl~ Consider carefully tlle aI'
rangement of your layers when you expect to have overlapping geometry.
I found MiniCAD's approach to printing to be a bit straIlge at first,
probably because it is a holdover from the Mac user interface. You select
a page size, aIld it automatically sets up your drm\~ng to be printed out
on however maIlY pages it takes in your default system printer. For most
people, tills would require them to print out twelve 8.5"x II" pages aIld
tJlen tape tJlem together to get a 0 size print. The solution is to sinlply select a plotter in tJle printing dialogue box. When Iset it up to print to my HP
Design Jet plotter, it produced vel)1 nice plots that were aligned exactly on tlle
paper as shown on tJle screen by tlle grayed out page break lines.
There are many other cool features in tlus package that aI°e aimed
at increased drawing producti~ty. The wall tool aIld the staircase tool are
really impressive. You CaIl probably guess what they're used for. The eyedropper tool allows you to traIlsfer attributes from one object to maIlY
otJlers. The wide raIlge of text formatting possibilities is excellent-extending even to the text in dimensions. TIle Object InfOIl1lation palette pro\~des you \\~tll all tJle peltinent infOIl1lation about aIly object tJlat you select
Oengtll, coordillates, aIlgle, radius, layer, class, etc.), aIld it also shows aIly
data tllat has been attached to tlle object. It also pro~des you \\~ili a meaIlS of
cycling tlUOUgil each object when more iliaIl one is selected.
MiniCAD is not \~thout some weaknesses. Some may relate to my
personal preferences from being a longtime AutoCAD user-but not all.
As I mentioned, the documentation leaves much to be desired. Wlule tJle
included trajnjng CD does all excellent job of demonstrating how all tJle
tools aIld menu con1l11aIlds work, there is very little about the concepts

associated witll how the program works, aIld tllere are no nItorials included. There is at least one aI'Clutecturai MOliai available at tlleir Web site
(www.Diehlgraphsoft.com). Look under tech notes. Dimensions CaIl be
custonllzed somewhat to display the way you would like, but it is not pal'
ticulaI'ly intuitive aIld certainly not documented. I expect tlmt someone
witllOUt aIly CAD background would need a good teacher to help lum or
her na\~gate tlle learning curve.
One tlung that I consider to be a big problem is that once a commaIld is started, you must complete it and then erase whatever you made
in tile commaIld that you now don't WaIlt. It's easy enough to lut the delete key, but if you happen to deselect the newly made unwaIlted item (s)
before you lut delete, you may have a large cleaIl up allead of you. At tile
very least, it is a loss in productivity. A means of caIlceling out of any
commaIld once it has been started would be very useful. Another such
problem is that tllere is only one level of undo, aIld even that one is lost
once the affected objects are deselected. I frequently found myself with a
mess on the screen \\~th no meaIlS of undoing the mess short of a long
and tedious select and delete procedure or to just quit aIld start over.
Some other tlUngs I would like to see are tool tips for the icons aIld labels on tlle various tool palettes.
The program crashed ratller frequently while I was testing it; however, I CaIl't say for certain whetller tlus is a problem with the software or
witil tile configuration of my PentiumPro 200. I loaded the program on
aIlother Pentium computer in order to test this problem aIld do some
plotting tests. So far it hasn't crashed on that computer. StaIldaI'd ad~ce:
save regularly!
All in all MiIliCAD .0 is a very inlpressive program-especially for
the price. The suggested retail is $ 95, but it CaIl be purchased for. 595

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1997