Version V8
I've put off upgrading to the latest becauseI'm still not sure if it's warranted. Anybodycare to share their experience with V8 and it'sworth the move?
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I only tried out the demo of version 7. I liked it fine, but by the time I was ready to buy, v8 was out.The new interface is very slick. You can drag the command bar to be any height from 1/8" to full height. Object properties is like in Autocad, a tall thin strip with everything stacked up, that you can leave on all the time, docked along one edge. Explorer is souped up, with easier to use more graphic interface, and now including xrefs and images.In general I'm very happy with v8. It's hard to believe how much program you get for the price. All my lisp routines work. Drawing file compatibility is very good - I've been sharing files with Autocad 2005 and 2007 users with no problems. And I can count on the fingers of one hand the features of Autocad that I miss in Brics8. Those are:-No WYSIWYG drawing mode (my all-time favorite Autocad improvement)-No Overkill command (which I used for cleaning up 2D DWG exports from Sketchup)-Trim doesn't work on hatches-Chamfer doesn't work on 2 polylinesThat's all! Pretty amazing at less than one-tenth of the price.
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My 2 cents worth for your consideration.+ sideBetter compatibility with autocad (when working in cooperation with other companies)VBA is the same as in autocad. So you can steal loads of code from the internet.Interface is better and the property pane saves time (as Anthony already metnioned).Dimension and text handeling is better (compatibility with Acad)- sideIt is defenitly slower and less stable then V7.VBA is slower also, and not everyting is implemented yet. so not all code you steal/write actualy works.*There are several buggs (e.g. [1] if you make a revcloud you are asked to invert yes/no. If you click in the drawing at that time you crash and burn [2] If the USC is not set to WORLD and you create a block, the insertion point will be incorrect.... some more stuf like that.)Personaly I am forced to work in V8 because of cooperation with autocad 2007 companies. If I had a choise I would wait a while until it would be a litle bit more stable. You probably know that the guy's from Bricsys offer updates very frequently so it should not take that long before the bugs are out. Once that is the case I would defenitly go for V8.
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AS for me, i'm waiting that Architecturals runs under V8. According to bricsys, it will be apparently for the end of this year. I'm impatient but also i'm happy with V7 except with the render command.(better in V5)
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We are having very poor results with V8. Only two of the machines running V8 can print without fatal crashes. A few can print, but plotstyles are ignored (even with Print Plotstyles check box checked)We are also experiencing numerous file corruptions in which drawings become unusable.Fortunately for me, V8 seems to work almost flawlessly on my machine, but that is only a 10% success rate company wide.Some minor complaints from users here include too many commands/procedures used daily in V6 are no longer supported in V8. Also, V8 does not look for user settings from a previous version when installing, so all customizations have to be re-done after install....including file paths, etc.
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I've been using V8 almost daily for the past couple of months. It was frustrating, at first, because the customizations were so different, lisp files wouldn't run, etc. But after a couple of patches and re-learning the customization procedure I have to say I like it a lot better than V7. The only feature I really miss in V8 is the ability to delete any layer in the drawing. You could do this in earlier versions and Bricscad would ask if you wanted to delete all objects on that layer or merge those objects onto another layer in the drawing. V8 will not do this . . . yet!
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I've run into two bugs which are significant enough to keep me from using it.-Ordinate dimensions don't stretch correctly, so they may show the wrong dimension.-The text of allternate units sometimes switches to showing the main units.The following is not a bug. But, I consider it a serious flaw. The program will open and save Autocad '04 to '07. However, some entities like tables don't display. The reason it is serious is that when you open a drawing with tables, you can't tell if you are missing them.Joe Dunfee
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V7 still works better for my liking, the most promising feature in V8 perhaps being saving to a file size in the new format of about half the size of previous formats which might handle larger files faster (?) - saving big files in V7 is pretty slow.But I believe V8 can still be bought as an upgrade if you have V7 which is really very inexpensive. It runs parallel without affecting your V7 installation and you can then follow the upgrades, fixes etc and support development which I consider a very worthwhile investent.
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I haven't really started using V8 for production work yet. The main reason, in addition to having to re-learn the entire customization interface, is that the support for previously compiled sds addons like doslib is permanently broken in V8. A couple of my everyday lisp routines rely on doslib to work. I may be able to reconstruct those routines for V8 using just vlisp functionality, but no documentation is available for vlisp in Bricscad yet. I suppose I could also ask the guy at McNeel writing doslib to make a new binary for V8, but I think he would need some kind of devkit for that.This won't hold me back forever though, since I like the look and feel of V8. Obviously a lot of effort has gone into it. I still consider it a beta product though.
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