Tip of the month! January: v9.08-10 release notes

Seems year 2017 is off to a pretty spectacular start, and there we were all fearing that 2016 is going to be unbeatable. Congratulations too to any of you that have still managed to keep your resolutions going, I made it a whole 16 days this time around. What better way to kick off in the new year than to give you a quick overview of the latest features, read on!

Palette CAD 9.08

• When combined light sources are selected, the brightness for the complete light source can be set in the setting section
• The wood technology board and the general board can be controlled via a setting section when they are selected in the project
• A standard staircase can be inserted into the scene from the menu “Insert / Board” (the staircase must be licensed for this)
• Standard staircase: For winding staircases, a string wreath can be created automatically in the corner to connect the stair stringers
• Standard staircase: Steps and landings for staircases can be mortised into the stair stringers
• Wood technology: The nested distribution has been expanded for continuous floors or sides in the rear panel of carcases and has been adapted to better suit the new wood technology 4.0
• There is now a setting option for the board projection in the nested distribution
• Many smaller improvements and bug fixes

Palette CAD 9.09

• A camera (Perspective) can be fixed so that it can no longer be shifted with the mouse (“Freeze camera”)
• If a zoom has been set in a perspective, the zoom remains the same when the camera is moved
• Selected light sources can be hidden permanently in the scene (“Hide light source in the scene”)
• The adjustment range for the brightness of light sources has been modified so that the effect on the brightness in the scene is reproduced more intuitively
• Rendered views in the Exposé are saved in compressed form and only require about 1/3 of the previous storage space
• There are animated objects in which, for example, doors or drawers can be opened in the scene via a slider (“State animation”)
• The Palette CAD object editor is required to create your own animated objects
• Importing files in the DXF and DWG formats has been optimized
• When importing large drawings in the DXF and DWG formats, you can select a partial area which is to be imported
• 3D lines and 2D drawings: Working with an arc through two points, it is now possible to enter either the height of the arc (distance) or the radius of the arc
• The creation and editing of 3D lines has been revised and is now more uniform and intuitive
• Wood technology: In a wood technology board, a “false mitre” can also be created now in which the board is only partially cut with a mitre
• Wood technology: Features in the wood technology board can be converted into alternative features (e.g. pocket to cutout or series of holes to individual holes)
• Palette Play files can be output in the format WEBGL, making it possible for them to be viewed in modern browsers without a plug-in  

 

Palette CAD 9.10

• There is an import function for PDF files that can import 2D plans as exact vectors
• This allows you to send architect’s plans as PDFs for use as construction templates
• The DXF/DWG import now shows a preview in which you can select a detail and only import this detail into the project
• The DXF/DWG import shows layers that you can hide individually
• Images (bitmaps) can be imported as objects with no thickness This allows you to place a scanned plan on the floor as a construction template, for example
• There is a new simple way of creating a multiple material from several materials
• 360° panorama images can be used as a background for cameras
• This requires creating a material with a panorama
• The panorama can also be a 360° panorama photo
• Palette Move can now also display stereo panorama images as VR
• Panorama images for Palette Move can be combined with jump labels so that viewer can “jump” from one panorama to another (File / Export / Create virtual tour)
• When creating a virtual tour, you can also import panorama photos
• Panorama images can be created so that you can upload them to Facebook
• Animated object: you can now animate sub-objects that cannot be selected as subgroups in the project
• Tile patterns created as a mix of different tiles (patchwork) can now be configured to prevent the same tiles being placed next to each other
• Tiling can now be simply removed in the setting section on the left in order to re-tile the surface 

Plenty to sink your teeth into then and some really cool features that you have been asking for, which we will look into in detail in the coming TOTM posts. Make sure to check them out and make sure to have some fun too.

Greetings from Stuttgart

Your Palette CAD Blog Team