The Plot Plan Editor. Love it or hate it. I’ve always hated it. The CAD engine in it isn’t mine and hasn’t been maintained in decades. It is quirky and generates nearly untraceable bugs. So a couple of weeks ago I started a major overhaul of its code, the old 3rd party code and my own. My main goal was to squash bugs, but in the end it ended up with many improvements. I won’t bore you with the internals other than to say that I did a lot of work and I think I fixed the issues in the 3rd party code. I tried not to change the interface so much that you’d be lost. Most operations should work pretty much the same as before. Some changes you can see and many more are behind the scenes. So here’s what you’ll see:
- Auto Saving – plot plans are saved automatically as they are drawn. No need to do anything. As soon as you start drawing, Sewers starts saving. All plot plans are saved to a folder within your Sewers data folder using the serial number of the design. Something like:
C:\Users\YourNameHere\Documents\Sewers_Data\plotplans\22111001.spp
If you haven’t saved the design yet (that’s when Sewers assigns the serial number) it will be saved to a temporary file using a globally unique code, something like:{C4A64D59-0E6C-47D8-9886-B21A18D47639}.spp
- History – plot plans contain their complete revision history which means you can backtrack on any changes, anytime.
- Undo/Redo – to facilitate using the plot plan’s history there are now full undo and redo features that can even be used after you’ve left and come back to the plot plan.
- Better printing and PDF generation – cleaned up some issues with both printing and making PDFs.
- Moved the File and Options menus – to make room in the interface for the Undo/Redo, the File and Options menu were moved to above the toolbar.
- Killed off the user library – was still having issues getting the user library to work correctly so in order to get this update out, I killed it off for now. If that inconveniences anyone, please let me know and I’ll put some more work into.
- Compatibility with previous plot plans – you should still be able to edit/print/etc old plot plans. They will be converted to the new format automatically.
So go ahead and kick the tires. I’d appreciate any feedback; good, bad, or ugly.