DESIGNER INTRO

Mike Williams investigates a new and professional looking draughting system for the Archimedes.

The packaging and documentation of this new product are both very smart leading to a high expectation on the part of the potential user. Within its brief as a 2D draughting system you are unlikely to be disappointed, and in my view the manual is a model of clarity compared with much computer documentation.

Designer Intro is supplied on disc, sealed in an envelope with a strong warning about copyright, and in use the unique serial number of your copy is displayed on screen. The manual, while only some 40 pages in length, is well printed in stiff attractively designed covers.

The separate installation notes cover Arthur 1.2 and hard disc installation, but make no reference to RISC OS. The manual does say that Designer Intro can be selected from the RISC OS Desktop, but my copy did not have the necessary files. However, I found no problems in running Designer Intro under RISC OS by booting the disc as usual. TechSoft says that RISC OS Desktop front-end will be included shortly.

When Designer Intro is first entered, it shows the current default settings for confirmation or change before displaying the drawing screen. These defaults cover drawing size (from A0 to A5), mouse sensitivity (a range of six from 0.1mm to 10mm), and choice of plotter or printer (23 makes including Epson, Graphtec, Hewlett Packard, Plotmate and Watanabe are detailed in the manual).

Once the main drawing area is on view, the foot of the screen shows constantly updated information on the current cursor position and other details. The right-hand edge of the screen is devoted to a ten item menu. However, the first (fixed) item allows the user to cycle through 4 different menus giving 36 menu choices in all, and many of these give further choices, displayed temporarily at the foot of the screen, or prompt for additional user input in the top-most line of the screen display. The result is an uncluttered screen with quick and easy access to a wide range of choices.

Most actions are mouse controlled, with the Select button called Execute (and corresponding to 'Y' for response to 'Y/N' type questions), the middle Menu button is designated Move (corresponding to 'N'), while the Adjust button, called Hunt helps in selecting existing points in a drawing. Execute is used to perform the currently selected action, while Move locates the cursor at a new position.

Some actions require keyboard input (to specify the size of an angle, for example), while the function keys (F0 to F9) always correspond to menu choices 0-9. Designer Intro can also be switched between mouse and full keyboard control as you wish. I found mouse control much the easier, and this is the default.

All of these basic points are clearly and thoroughly covered at the start of the menu, which then follows with a tutorial section taking you in detail through three separate drawings. These 'walk throughs' are excellent, and do much to convey a good 'feel' for the package. However, I felt that I was then thrown too quickly into the reference section of the manual, and a couple more examples and perhaps some general guidance would be a useful addition at this point.

BASIC DRAWING

Drawing is delightfully easy. There is a Rubber-band feature, as would be expected, or free-hand drawing can be selected. An Ortho option constrains drawing in a horizontal or vertical direction, while a Grid may be selected to assist accurate drawing. With the grid selected, Grid lock forces the cursor to the nearest grid point, and a Fine option, as the name suggests, allows 10 increments between grid points. All of these items are in menu 1.

CURVES

Menu 2 deals with curve drawing and with transformations of part or all of the current drawing. There are options for circles, ellipses and arcs. The simplest form of circle is defined by moving the cursor to mark its centre and typing its radius in from the keyboard. However, there are also options to draw a circle through a point, touching either one or two lines, arcs or circles, and several more options besides. The same is true for arcs. Thus complex shapes can be readily built up from circles, arcs, tangents and the like, and subsequently deleting the unwanted parts of any construction also seems to work remarkably well (see later), but splines or Bezier curves are not included.

TRANSFORMATIONS

Other options in menu 2 deal with transformations of your drawing, or selected parts. The possibilities include Move, with the option of replicating an object, Mirror an object about the x or y axes, and Rotate an element through a specified number of degrees. With the latter two options, the transformed drawing can replace the original or be added to the original. There is also a similar Alter size option.

In addition to the above, Menu 2 also includes a hatching option. This is like a 'fill' routine except that you determine the angle and spacing of the lines to be used, and cross-hatching is achieved by repeating the process.

Zoom and pan facilities are included in menu 3. There is also a separate scaling option which allows a particular scale factor to be specified. With the default scale of 1:1 and A3 size, the screen drawing area represents 360mm x 260mm. With a scale of 1:2 for example, the displayed drawing size will be twice the default, and so the picture appears smaller.

DELETIONS

Perhaps the most important option in this menu is Delete, and it is worth explaining here a very important feature of Designer Intro. The software creates an internal representation of any drawing seen on the screen, so that at any time the current drawing can be re-created, and more importantly the software can identify any component of a drawing selected by the user. Over and above this, the user can divide a drawing into a series of Elements. Thus when rotation is selected, the user specifies which elements of the drawing are to be rotated.

When Delete is selected, a sub-menu allows a choice between 'last item', line or part line, arc/circle or part thereof, element or text. To delete a line or arc you just move the cursor near to that item and press Execute. The software locates that part of the drawing, which then flashes, for you to confirm that deletion should take place. As I said before, deletion seems to work remarkably well, any amount of deletion being handled without problems. The Redraw option is useful after multiple deletes may have left 'holes' in various lines. This method of representation and the use of elements also allows any part of an existing drawing to be entered and modified.

The fourth menu allows for text and dimensions (with arrows) to be entered. It also provides for the saving and re-loading of drawings, and a number of other options.

CONCLUSIONS

The software has a good 'feel' to it in practice, benefitting no doubt from the experience of previous implementations for the BBC micro. Both software and documentation seem excellent, with the one qualification about the manual, and this is a product which can be thoroughly recommended. TechSoft also says that a much enhanced version of this product (called Designer) should be available later this year.
ProductDesigner Intro
SupplierTechSoft UK Ltd,
 Old School Lane,
 Erryrys, Mold, Clwyd CH7 4DA.
 Tel. (082) 43318