How do I know I won't be charged for downloading? You can not be charged for trying the program, for we do not ask for your credit card information. While some sites do require this information before you download, we do not. We don't even ask for your name or email address. So we don't know anything about you at all. That's what shareware is all about. We invite you to try it. You buy if you like it. If you decide not to buy, just use the Windows' "Remove Program" option to delete the program from your disk.
How can I draw lines and other drawing elements at an angle?
Normally, the cursor is held at a horizontal or vertical angle to make drawing easier.
Can HomePlan PRO work in metric measurements?
You can switch between Metric mode and US mode from the Options menu.
Is there an easier way to quickly select a drawing element for moving, etc.?
If you want to quickly select just a single drawing element, click the right mouse button on it.
How can I re-size pre-drawn figures easily and accurately?
A fast but not very precise way to resize a pre-drawn figure:
To resize a figure more precisely:
To resize a figure that has already been placed in the drawing:
When I "Flip" a plan, the pre-drawn figures don't flip correctly
Drawing coordinates for pre-drawn figures are stored in a Figure file, rather than in the plan file.
The plan file just stores which figure to use and it's size, rotation, and location.
The default solution is to rotate the figure 180 degrees. That's the default, but sometimes this isn't what you want to see.
The foolproof solution is to "Expand" the figure into individual drawing elements that can be flipped.
There is a setting on the "Figure" tab of the Preferences screen. You can choose:
Why do lines I "hide" not show up on the screen but sometimes showup on the printout? How do I avoid that? When you print a plan, the screen resolution has to be converted to the printer resolution. Since both devices use round numbers to count the dots per inch, there is a danger of rounding errors when mutliplying and dividing. The best approach to the Hide tool, is to be sure it covers the thing it's hiding by a couple of pixels on each side. Why do some lines/misalignments show when I zoom out on the screen but not when I zoom in? There are just so many pixels on your monitor. If we assign 1/2" per pixel when zoomed in, and then zoom out so each pixel = 1", the monitor isn't able to show the 1/2" accurately. The actual distance is stored in the plan, and when you print, it should print correctly. Printers have much greater resoultion than your monitor, and print much more precisely. What is the largest sheet size you can print on?
You can print
on any size sheet your printer supports. Click the "Paper
Size" drop down list to see what sizes your printer supports.
Some printers also support a "User Size" function. If yours
does, you can set the paper size from the "Custom" menu
item on the Printer Screen.
Kinko's ™ has a free
printer driver
that might help. Although it installs like, and looks like a printer driver, it actually makes a file that you can upload or take to their store and have them print a large copy.
My biggest problem has been that I cannot figure out how to easily and more importantly accurately locate a door or window within a wall. I draw the wall then want to insert a window for example that's located 6"-0" down from the top corner of the wall and is 5'-0" wide. How do I position it so it is located dimensionally correctly? One quick way is to start a line from a known point and watch the "Odometers" in the status bar. Instead of drawing the line, press the Escape key when you have the cursor where you want it. The keyboard is better than the mouse for precise movement. The numberpad keys explained below are also useful for this. How much space (bytes) does the program take up? The installation takes about 2.2 megabytes. Plans you draw run from 2k to 40k each depending on the number of drawing elements. Can I draw more accurately somehow? It's hard to do it right with the mouse. Yes, you can. Use the arrow keys. The stand-alone keys move the cursor one pixel at a time. The Number Pad keys (if Num Lock is on) move the keys a user-set distance. By pressing the Plus and Minus keys, you can change that distance. The current setting is shown at the right end of the Status Bar. I don't like the way the mouse works in this new version. Who needs a right click to pop up a menu? A lot of users have asked for this, a pop up on a right click. And it is conventional in Windows programs. So the change was made. However, for users of earlier versions of this program, the option to use the right mouse button to end a drawing has been retained. In Preferences on the Drawing tab, select Traditional HPP Usage. The mouse will behave as it did in earlier versions. Note, however, the Help file has been rewritten to fit the new action of a pop up on a right click. I'm confused about zooming. Sometimes it seems like I've lost a lot of my plan when I zoom in. Am I doing something wrong? No. It's just that when you zoom in there may not be enough room in the drawing area to hold your entire plan. In which case, it may seem that part of it has been lost. But it's not. Let me put it this way. The drawing size of a plan is selected when a new one is started. It can be changed while drawing. The drawing size determines the zoom scale. If you zoom in, it can make the plan bigger than the drawing area. If you scroll at this point, part of the plan will seem to have been lost. But it's not so. When you zoom back out, the entire plan will be available. There is a "Magnify Area" routine that will zoom way in on any area without truncating the plan. You draw a box around an area, and it fills the screen with that area. This is very convenient when you want to draw small details in one part of the plan. I didn't know that the size of the plan reduced from 100x100 to approximately 50x50 as you zoomed in. Why is that? It's due to the size of the screen. There are 1200 pixels to work with. At 1 inch per pixel, we get 100' (1200 pixels = 1200 inches). If you want 1/2" per pixel, then 1200 pixels = 50' (1200 pixels = 600 inches). Remember you can use the Magnify Area tool for detailed work. When I select a number of walls with different thicknesses, then change the fill pattern, the thicknesses also change. How come? When multiple walls are selected and altered, all of the selected walls will be changed to the new settings. For example, if you select a wall that is 8" thick, then several that are 6", when you change the fill pattern, you will find the 6" walls are now 8" thick. The way to avoid this is to select walls one at a time. Or select all 8" walls, make the change, then repeat with 6" walls. Text must be handled in the same way. If you want to change the text font, but not the size (or the size, but not the font), select elements individually. Select a group of elements only when you want the same change applied to all elements selected. Sometimes I get lines across the drawing. For example when drawing a filled polygon, I get a line across it after clicking twice to terminate the polygon. Occasional, drawing operations leave "artifacts" on the screen. The example you give is due to a reaction from Windows filling the polygon on top of the full-screen cross hairs. Clicking the "Redraw" button removes artifacts. They are not part of the plan, and will not be saved or printed. We appreciate hearing about conditions that create artifacts, so we can try to eliminate them. Every file I open, opens with a "fill pattern" texture filling the whole screen!!! What's wrong? It sounds like the snap grid is turned on. Home Plan Pro remembers the setting, and so it comes back on each time you start up. Uncheck "Snap On" under View in the main menu. The software creates problems with my keyboard, and I can't use most of the letters. (The Text function is therefore unavailable!) If you are using a laptop without a number pad, you need to un-check "Turn Num Lock on when starting" on the Preferences "Startup" tab. This handy feature provides number pad users with a neat way to move measured distances, but interferes with the combination keyboards found on many laptops. I thought I could have more than one plan open in your new version, but I don't know how to do it. You can open as many as you like. However, only one at a time can be viewed in the work area. To select another plan already loaded, click on Windows in the main menu. Then click to select the plan you need. Is there a default font for use in dimensions? Yes. Select the default you want to use in Preference on the Dimensions tab. I am having trouble with font sizes while printing. Is the text size adjusted along with the drawing size? Or should it look the same on a printed drawing as in work area on screen? Trying to decide how to size text is tricky. Typically, you don't want text to keep getting bigger or smaller in proportion to the drawing size, else the text would be huge when drawing tiny things, and tiny when drawing huge things. However, some text scaling is probably needed. There are two item in Preferences that affect text size:
If you usually print very large or very small plans, you may want to set this last item. But you may need to change it before you print a plan much different in size. Unfortunately, no one answer suits all. Some experimenting with these two options is necessary to find the settings that work best for you. |