Upgrade from your existing cadvilla version to version 10.x.x.x

While inserting walls, real-time dimensions are now displayed. Depending on how you work, these dimensions provide the exact length and are at the same time a visual control for identifying snap lines or grid points.

As soon as a wall is intersected with another wall, the interior and exterior dimensions are also displayed. (see our video on the right)

With the new numerical tool, the real-time dimensions are also included, but more as rough overview. The real lengths is specified after the second mouse click.

In our standard tool for polygonal input via 2 points the second mouse click inserts the wall directly into the project. This is different in our new, additional input variant. With the second mouse click, a dialog appears in which the length and, if necessary, the angle can be numerically inserted and confirmed directly with ENTER. Inaccurate inputs due to unwanted movements with your mouse are no longer a problem.

The length in the dialog always refers to the currently active wall side, which is determined with CTRL + W during input.

With our “Tips for inserting walls” button you get the most important tips for inserting walls, such as CTRL + W to change the reference side, holding down the CTRL key to activate the angle grid and pressing the ESC key to exit the wall input.

When a wall is selected, two dimensions and two buttons with  ±  appear.

Use these buttons to open the numeric input dialog in which you edit the exact length. Changing a wall lenght always applies in the input direction of the wall. This is marked by an arrow at the end of the wall (in our example on the right within the selected wall).

The previous lengthening or shortening of walls with our shortcut key V (also available via “Edit → Edit walls”) still works, of course, and can also be started by clicking on the red arrow at the end of the wall.

The numerical lengthening or shortening of walls always applies in the direction of a wall. The wall direction is marked by a red arrow inside the wall when it is selected.

You can now change this input direction via context menu of the right mouse button.

In addition, there is also the same option for changing a wall direction using the tool under “Edit → Edit walls”.

In addition to the previous tools for inserting windows and doors, there is now another, extremely efficient option. This happens in two steps.

The first step is to position the window or door elements in the approximate position where they should be.

This is supported by additional real-time dimension lines – similar to the new wall tools. These dimension lines are only used for your orientation and not in order to achieve an exact positioning at that stage.

Our tip: By copying and then pasting windows or doors of the same type, you increase the input speed considerably. As soon as you have copied an opening element after selecting it with CTRL-C, you can insert it several times with CTRL-V at different positions and walls.

In a second step, you position your window or door numerically.

To do this, first select the opening element. Once selected, multiple dimensions related to the floor plan appear on your screen. These include the dimensions along the outer wall, measured from the left and right corners of the selected element. In addition, the dimensions of any interior walls and dimensions to the left and right of the next opening element appear.

A small  ±  button appears above each dimension line. Click on this button to open an input dialog in which you can specify the exact distance for the opening element.

Our dimensioning tools now contain two new menu items with which you can create automatic dimensioning drafts in 2D plan views. One is for automatic creation of dimensions for a single wall and the other automatic dimensioning of the entire floor plan.

The automatic dimensioning of the entire floor plan, all external walls and adjacent internal walls contained on the active layer are taken into account. In our new settings dialog you can specify which dimension chains should be generated automatically. The options are:

• Dimension of the total length of each side of the building
• External wall dimensions: if there is an offset in the facade
• Internal wall dimensions: includes the internal walls adjoining the external walls
• Dimensions for windows and doors

Once the dimension lines have been created automatically, the selected dimension types can be revised again separately for each side.

When generating the automatic dimensioning drafts, your floor plan is analyzed and the required dimension lines are generated depending on the floor plan layout. Regardless of the settings in the dialog, it can happen that you do not receive the four activated dimension lines, but only those that make sense. If there are no windows and doors on one side of the building or no offset in the facade (as in our example above), the software creates, for example, only three dimension lines instead of the predefined four.

If the automatic dimensioning draft for a building side does not deliver the desired result, you can select it and separate it via context menu.

Now every single dimension line of the draft can be individually selected and changed according to your needs.

As with normal dimension lines, you can now delete individual dimensions, reposition them, or insert a manual dimension line instead.

With the help of the automatic item texts, you can quickly establish a connection to the concurrent quantities plugin. Exactly the item numbers for walls and windows (optionally with associated description – e.g. wall) are automatically created within your drawing.

So if you need drawings in which you can immediately see in your floor plan which wall is meant by “Wall 1” and where it is located, you can simply generate the automatic item texts. Should one of these automatically generated texts be in an inconvenient position, it can be moved without any problems.

With version 10 we have added more than 200 new 3D objects to our standard catalog. The additions essentially concern the following catalog categories.

• 35 new doors , double doors, doors with side windows and external doors
• 14 cars
• more than 65 bathroom objects
• more than 90 3D objects for office interior

The 2D symbol catalog was extended with more than 250 additional, partly colored symbols:

• Living (cupboards, sofas, armchairs, stools, chairs)
• Sleeping room
• Furnishings
• Bathroom

Closed 2D graphic elements are created with our 2D drawing functions on “2D & Layout“. These include rectangles, closed polygons, circles and ellipses. What is new with these functions is that the area for the drawn 2D graphic elements is now displayed in its properties dialog.

For example, you can now use the 2D drawing functions to trace an imported site plan, and after selecting an inserted polygon you will immediately know how many m² it covers.

So far there was no difference in our program between dormer walls and normal walls. We have now changed that. The dormer dialog offers two new options for dormer walls.

• Show sidewalls in 2D top views
• Show front wall in 2D top view

The screenshot shows the previous display of dormers on the left and the dialog with the above options and the changed display in the 2D top view on the right.

• Lightweight and partition walls now only have one wall layer with a thickness of 10 cm.
• The list of recently opened projects now has 12 instead of 6 entries.
• When inserting windows in external walls, these are now always automatically set to opening inwards
• There is now one (project-based) option: Show all – all views
• The support dialog (under Help → Show support dialog → Repair functions), the excavation for all beds, terraces, bodies of water and paths in the project can be set to 0
• Properties can now also be transferred to terrain elements bed, terrace, water and path
• When inserting height points, the values of the last entered point is retained for new entries and the dialog accepts the data with ENTER.
• The handling of the cursoring when changing the size of elements in 2D has been simplified. Elements can now be moved or changed directly with the mouse.
• Scaling of 3D objects in 2D plan views with the mouse
• The selected path in the catalog can now be added to the favorites menu.
• Unnecessary room texts are now also deleted via “Remove invalid elements” in the support dialog.
• …