PlansPlus PowerTool
PlansPlus PowerTool |
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PlansPlus, as its name suggests is a PowerTools which manipulates the Punch! plans. It provides a series of enhancements to plans, including the following:
PlansPlus is a Punch! PowerTool which mimics Punch!'s plan display. It repeats the plans in a window which it controls, which allows it to make enhancements to the plans that Punch! cannot make directly. Note that you cannot edit most objects in this window like you can in Punch!'s plan window; for that you have to return to Punch!. But PlansPlus makes up for that with a whole series of unique options of its own.
PlansPlus replaces the scale options in Punch! with an enhanced selection of options. Not only are the common english and metric scales available, but also a raft of hobbyist scales (like railroad modeler's HO scale) and also a custom scale capability. Of course, scale setting is not very useful on a screen, for several reasons, not th least of which is a screen's ability to zoom, but scales are required when committing the plan to be printed.
Printing capabilities in PlansPlus include the ability to specify, in addition to Punch!'s whole plan, subsets of the plan as defined by the part of the plan currently visible on the screen, and also by a rectangular portion of the plan marked with the selection tool. Like Punch!, the scope can be printed on a single page or to scale, and the printing scales available have been increased to any scale that the user can type in. The number of pages that will be printed is reported before the printing is begun, so the user can abort the action before it starts.
The Punch! plan, or any rectangular portion of it may now be exported to a hard disk file. The file may be in any of three formats: a device-independent bitmap (bmp) file, a portable network graphics (png) file, or as a vector metafile (emf). Each has it's advantages; the bmp is almost universally usable in other computing contexts, while the png format (like .gif and .jpg) is compressed and Internet-ready. Emf files can be transported to a non-Punch! computer and then expanded to low or high resolution graphics as needed. In addition, the resolution of the image may be specified for the bmp and png files; for emf files, the resolution is variable, specified at the time the file is displayed rather than when it is created.
New to PlansPlus is the ability to edit objects in the plan in ways that cannot be done in Punch!. Individual objects in a plan may be selected and a color differing from the default plan color (blue for the floor plan, orange for electrical, for instance) can be applied. This is useful in color-coding objects, perhaps to denote those which pre-exist a remodelling from those that are added. The fill for those objects which have shapes, such as walls, floors, decks, ground fills and so on can now be set from a palette of hatchwork; the default solid blue of the walls can be changed to hollow (white fill), as many building commissions require, as an example of this feature's use.
In Punch! many items include dimensional or other wordings, termed "callouts", as part of their drawing. PlansPlus allows these callouts to be turned off for individual objects. Punch! allows the windows and door callouts and autodimensions to be turned off; PlansPlus allows these and adds fence dimensions, deck dimensions, railing notations, the stairway "Up" arrow, and other verbage to be turned on or off at will.
The autodimensions on walls is a great feature of Punch!, but sometimes the default dimensions show up in the wrong place. PlansPlus now allows you to set a different offset for the autodimensions on a wall-by-wall basis.
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In this sample, note that the dimensions near the cursor and those measuring the length of the Lav have been moved outward. The old walls have been filled with crosshatch and colored gray, leaving the remodeling changes highlighted. The center door's callout has been suppressed. |
All of these changes, please note, happen only within PlansPlus's window; they cannot be exported back to Punch!. But they remain as part of the drawing; color setting made one day are available from then on, until they are changed to something else. Options are available to turn these changes off as well, reverting the objects back to their default state.
A quick summary of the other things that PlansPlus can do for your drawings:
Finally, to top it off, PlansPlus is the host for TKE's MicroTools. These tools add even more enhancements to Punch! plans in a modular, thrifty way that allows PlansPlus's features and each of the MicroTools to all interact simultaneously on the plans. Dimensions in Detail will allow the plans to have customized dimensional units, such as inches with fractions or millimeters, and PlansPlus will print the enhanced dimensions while also moving them through it's own autodimension offset feature. PlantTracks enhanced tree designs can make use of the advanced dimensions, and the whole plan can be exported to a .png file for display on an Internet web page. The possibilities are endless, and increasing as more MicroTools and PlansPlus enhancements are released.
| PlansPlus Version | Curved To Fit | Dimensions in Detail | GeoDome | PlantTracks | Metes and Bounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0.0-2.0.1 | 2.0.0 | 1.0.0 | |||
| 2.0.2-2.1.0 | 2.0.2 | 1.0.1 | |||
| 2.1.1-2.1.5 | 2.0.3 | 1.0.2 | |||
| 2.1.6 | 1.0.0 | ||||
| 2.2.0 | 1.1.0 | 2.1.0 | 1.1.0 | ||
| 2.2.1 | 1.1.0 | ||||
| 2.2.2-2.2.7 | 1.1.1-1.1.5 | ||||
| 2.2.8-2.2.11 | 1.1.1 | 2.1.1-2.1.2 | 1.1.1 | 1.1.6-1.1.7 | |
| 2.3.0-2.3.7 | |||||
| 2.4.0 | 1.2.0 | 2.2.0 | |||
| 2.4.1-2.4.4 | 1.2.0 | 1.2.0 | |||
| 2.4.5-2.5.0 | 1.2.1 | 1.2.1-1.2.3 | |||
| 2.6.0-.4 | 1.3.0 | 2.3.0-.2 | 1.3.0-.1 | 1.3.0-.4 | 1.0.0 |
| 3.0.0-3.0.4 | 2.0.0 | 3.0.0 | 2.0.0 | 2.0.0 | 1.0.0 |
| 3.0.5-.6 | 2.0.1 | 3.0.1 | 2.0.1 | 2.0.1 | 1.0.1 |
| 3.1.0-.2 | 2.1.0 | 3.1.0 | 2.1.0 | 2.1.0-.3 | 1.0.1 |
[TKE released the Precision PowerTool in March 2004, and in September replaced that tool with PlansPlus. The questions and answers below address how the transition from Precision to PlansPlus is to be handled.]
The original Precision 1.x was developed to provide a series of enhancements to Punch! users. Specifically it provided:
These latter were considered necessary to support the former, since Precision is a display-only tool. Without the ability to print or export, or to return the dimension data back to Punch! (which cannot use it), Precision needed the print and export, and they were enhanced in the process.
Thinking beyond Precision to the next PowerTool, it was determined that it would be built on the back of the code for Precision, because the ability to display, print and export plans is basic to a lot of good PowerTool ideas. This was OK, but what about the users who bought and want to use both Precision and whatever new PowerTools at the same time, in the same plan? ThistleKeep could provide special versions which contained both PowerTools in one, but this would get nasty as the number of such tools grew.
With a bit of thought an idea blossomed. What if we were to create a PowerTool that contained just the plan display, print and export functions of Precision, and then add to that "plugins" of the sort that Windows browsers, or WinAmp, for example, use? That would kill several birds with one stone. The basic capabilities would always be there. The additional capabilities brought on-board by the plugins (we call them MicroTools) could be combined in operation in ways that PowerTools, which need to act serially rather than together, cannot. Additionally, Microtools can be produced faster and cheaper than the older paradigm allowed for.
This had the confusing effect, however, of breaking up the functionality in Precision into two parts: The basic PowerTool (now renamed PlansPlus) and a MicroTool, which inherited the Precision dimensional abilities. One has become two, but for good reason.
Oh, yes. The free updater for PlansPlus 2.0.0 will replace the older Precision with PlansPlus. In addition, it will add in an already installed copy of the PlansPlus 2.0.0 MicroTool, and the combination of these two will provide the same functionality as Precision 1.1.1 did. However, in addition to that, those users will now have the ability to join new purchasers of PlansPlus in purchasing additional MicroTools which will work with PlansPlus and Dimensions in Detail to leverage the capabilities of PlansPlus.
Only one thing remains: make sure that your current version of PlansPlus is high enough to work with the MicroTool. As TKE creates more MicroTools for PlanPlus, that will inevitably involve changes to PlanPlus to support the new MicroTools. All the updates will be free here, and all updates include all those back to the previous main version (read the page for instructions on how to update). The version is always displayed on the PlansPlus Help->About menu pick, along with a list of installed MicroTools, and if the MicroTool you want to install is on that list, then it is supported by your copy of PlansPlus. If not, then follow the instructions on the update page to download the proper PlansPlus updates and apply them. After you've installed the MicroTool, restart Punch! and check the PlansPlus About dialog again to make sure the MicroTool is listed and indicated as active.
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This page last updated on Sun Jun 15 2008 |