BC Pro 6.0.0004 broke my digitizer
Used 5.2.0010 about noon on 4-26. Everything was OK. Installed 6.0.0004 about 6 pm same day. Tried to use BC the next day and tablet input of commands did not work. Got new drivers for my tablet (Calcomp-GTCO) with no improvment. Tried another brand of tablet with the same results. I can configure the tablet without difficulty. I can enter the tablet Grid Commands into the registry just fine. Tried reverting to older BC - went all the way back to 5.0.0011. Tablet commans still did not work. I've been thru this before with other programs and know that, while some programs claim to "fully" uninstall themselves, it's not always 100% true. I tried deleting everything relating to BC or ICAD on my hard disk or in the registry. Does BC write a file that's less obvious and harder to find. I have been hoping for some changes (improvements) in tablet operation, but this is not what I had in mind. Any help would be appreciated.
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Bricscad doesn't have hidden files. The application writes the tablet settings in the registry in the userprofile(HKeyCurrentUser/Software/Bricscad/Bricscad/Profiles/YourCurrentProfile), it could be useful to just try another profile and reinitialize the tablet.You can use the UserProfileManager to start up with a new profile, or create a shortcut to the application and then edit it. Behind icad.exe there should be an additional option '/P yournewprofilename'.If the /P option is not entered explicitly, the application starts up with the same profile as the last time. Let's hope this allows you to get the tablet to work again on 5.0 . And possibly , on 6.0 as well.Alexander Van Heuverzwyn,Bricscad
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OK, I've got a solution. Sorry to have jumped the gun. It's a bit more complicated than I imagined. Multiple issues. First, the driver for the Calcomp digitizer that I've been using for the last half dozen years or so has a conflict with Windows XP Service Pack2. This conflict went unnoticed for several months after installing SP2 and, in accordance with Murphy's Law, chose the day I installed BC6 to lay down and die. Part of the answer. So I downloaded the new GTCO Calcomp driver, version 10.0018, and installed it, expecting to go back to work. Seems that the company who provide the original driver lost a patent lawsuit and that the new driver is only Wintab 1.0 compliant. That means only partial Wintab compatibility resulting in flaky performance. I've located a new driver ($65 from vtablet.com) It looks like WinTab is no longer the universal interface for digitizers.
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Ooops, just posted a similar question. Have you had any luck Mark? Any suggestions? Thanks
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I see that you're heading down the path I've stumbled down before. The following is all that I've been able to find out - and surmise. First, some history. Intellicad came to life under the Visio banner using the Intellicad 98 moniker. A glaring fault of that product was abscence of tablet support. Criticism was widespread and severe. In fairly short order, Visio added tablet support - in Revision "D" if I remember right. That implementation was, being chairitable, anemic - and subject to a lot more criticism. I guess everybody thought they'd get it right in their next effort. But then Visio folded up and sold out to MS. The results are that the tablet code have not been improved and are now seven years old. The simple factual errors in the help file remain the same.So, stepping aside for a while, let's go back to Wintab. Wintab was developed by LCS/Telegraphics who wrote the drivers for Wacom, GTCO and a bunch of others. LCS promoted Wintab as an industry standard, and so it was. Wintab went from 1.0 to 1.1 and - I believe 1.2. Then disaster happened and destroyed the standard. LCS lost a patent infringement lawsuit to the developer of Virtual Tablet and, as a result of a settlement has declined to license or distribute their implementation of WinTab any more. So all of the tablet manufacturers who used their driver have had to revise their offering and all application programs that depend on Wintab 1.1 [e.g., Intellicad] are now obsolete. It's unclear to me whether Virtual Tablet implements all of the features of Wintab 1.1 either. Some of what I've seen leads me to speculate that, perhaps, no one developer owns all of the rights to Wintab 1.1.Now back to Intellicad. The original tablet interface was developed at a time when Wintab 1.1 was the industry standard. It's reasonable speculation that the developers of that product designed for all the features of that standard. The result is that Intellicad, despite advertising to the contrary, is no longer digitizer enabled.
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Thanks for the hisory Mark. Some of which I was able to piece together. In our particular business (Landscape and Irrigation - Commercial and Residential) The tablet is a Must Have - especially regarding Residential jobs. At best, most homeowners have a simple (at best) xeroxed copy of their plat. It is up to us to use whatever info that it contains to create a useable drawing of the lot, house, pool, existing structures etc - before we can even begin to design the job. Hiring surveyors etc is not an option on residential jobs, the budgets are usually strained at best.I agree that further developments in Tablet features is a must have. We are having limited luck with the new Calcomp Tabletworks 10.0.0018. However is is very prone to locking up, losing it's CAL and CFG settings in the middle of a session, and sometimes will not let us go to the transformation mode, no matter how many point s are selected.
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Sorry to have not responded. I haven't been frequenting this forum much lately. I gave up on Bricscad and have gone back to AutoCad. I decided that it's unlikely that Bricscad will ever fix the tablet interface. I wrote to them over a year ago with detailed information on problems (and fixes!) with the program. To date they have never replied - not with an acknowledgment or a fix. The theory that I hear most around here is that the ITC partners have to donate their core program fixes to the ITC and hence there's no motivation for Bricscad (or any partner) to work on fixing core defects. I am more prone to the theory that, Bricscad being a European company, they have no interest in the North American Market or in cartering to American users who are addicted to the tablet interface. Perhaps Cadopia or Autodsys might be more amenable to getting things working. If I'm still a Bricscad customer after the next version comes out, maybe I'll message at you again. TTFN.
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Hi Mark. The tablet issue is not a simple one. We from BricsCad have worked on it a year ago. It did solve some problems but in all modesty it wasn’t the solution. Since then I admit we have concentrated on a variety of issues which needed to be fixed and/or enhanced. The tablet problem – maybe by mistake – wasn’t on the priority list. BricsCad has gone a long way with this software for the last three years. We have a team of 12 developers constantly on the code and we are more determined than ever to make it a good, rock solid software. You will forgive me that I disagree with you regarding our attention for the American market. We have many, many customers in the US and are answering as many US support requests as European ones. Btw the coming months you probably will see some announcements regarding our increased efforts on your continent. I can’t commit to a deadline or quick solution for your problem, but I assure you that we investigate the it and evaluate/ implement possible solutions. We will do what we can to help tablet users, but I know that it will take time, as it will require a lot of development. In the mean time I understand your frustration and if you want to use AutoCAD again, I regret it a lot but understand your decision. At BricsCad an unsatisfied customer is hard to accept. One more thing: I looked it up, and found out that BricsCad people did react on your request(s). Maybe not with the answers that you were expecting.Erik De Keyser, CEO BricsCad
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