New Features – Treesoft Cad 7.2

Multi-monitor, ultrawide monitor, and HiDPI support

Treesoft Office’s screen management is continuously being developed and forms the basis for many new features in version 7.2. The flexible screen management in Treesoft Office 7.2 helps you to easily distribute open windows across multiple screens or on an ultrawide monitor as desired and reattach them at the touch of a button. In addition, support for the latest generation of HiDPI monitors has been significantly improved. In my personal opinion

, the ultimate choice right now is a 49″ ultrawide monitor with a resolution of 5,120 x 1,440 pixels, such as the Samsung Odyssey G9, which I have on my own desk. Programs are displayed 1:1 without scaling, and although the pixel density is significantly lower than on a 4K monitor, the display is still incomparably good.

Set symbol above catalog tree

With the upgrade to version 7.2, we have added the Move Dock Window drop-down button to the Set Symbol via Catalog Tree function in the Catalog Tree dock window. The drop-down menu contains commands for moving and positioning the dock windows in a child window. This button allows you to open all dock windows of the function in a child window with just one click, which can then be moved to a second or third screen or positioned anywhere on an ultrawide monitor.

In the figure above, you can see the navigator docked to the artboard on the left and the child window with the dock windows of the Set Symbol via Catalog Tree function on the right. Of course, you can also bring all windows back to the main screen with just one click to make room for the window of another software program.

We have also come up with some special features for operation, such as the command “Mirror dock window horizontally.” You can see how this works and what other great things we have created for you in the webinar or read about it in the manual and try it out for yourself.

MDI Multiple Document Interface

With Treesoft Office Version 7.2, we have fulfilled the wishes of many customers and developed a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) with tab navigation for Treesoft CAD. This MDI makes it possible to open several circuit diagrams from different projects at the same time in order to copy specific areas or even entire sheets from a source drawing to the desired target drawing.

You can specify the settings for copying in a pop-up dialog box. Equipment codes are transferred unchanged or used to create symbolic BMKs. These can then be automatically replaced using the Text > Replace Symbolic BMKs command, in accordance with the formation rule set in the active project. Symbolic BMKs can also be created from the cable codes, which are then automatically renumbered. Item numbers can be transferred or deleted and then reassigned as desired. Everything is possible here, and circuit diagrams can be copied together in no time at all – it couldn’t be more convenient or faster.

This is definitely a feature that you should have demonstrated to you in the webinar. Of course, you can read about all the options here, but you run the risk of overlooking things and leaving them unused. In the workshops at Top Days, Treesoft’s annual in-house exhibition, we repeatedly hear the phrase “Oh my goodness, I wish I’d known that sooner.” Unfortunately, customers often realize at this point that they have never fully exploited the possibilities of Treesoft CAD and have therefore wasted a lot of time and money.

Open document dialog (read-only)

The Open Document (Read-Only) dialog contains everything you need to find the schematic in the existing projects from which you want to copy parts or entire sheets. This dialog is a combination of the project list, the Open – Navigator dialog, and the preview window, which you are already familiar with from the Print and PDF Export dialogs. The dialog can also be switched to full-screen mode with a mouse click, and then finding the schematic page you are looking for becomes a pleasure.

Treesoft CAD remembers the tabs you have open and automatically opens the corresponding documents when you restart the program. Simply open all drawings with standard template circuits in as many tabs as you like. After restarting, you will have direct access to your circuit books and can immediately start copying the circuit diagram.

File > Open – Navigator

The menu command File > Open – Navigator displays all documents belonging to the project in a clear directory tree in a dock window. The following illustrations show the Open – Navigator dialog for a control technology project and a building technology project, each with an entry in the Find field to demonstrate the Find function.

This dialog box contains a concentrated load of sophisticated technology. To understand how high-performance the whole thing has been developed, you need to briefly consider everything that happens there: The files are sorted correctly, the content information, attachments, and location codes (if available) for each sheet are read from the drawing file and displayed, and the pages of the entire project are numbered consecutively. In addition, the dialog must determine how many floor plans or switch cabinet views are stored in the corresponding drawing file and which layer is to be displayed after opening.

In the first executable version, calling up the Open – Navigator dialog in the test project we created, which had a total of 1651 pages, took almost three minutes. Our developers then optimized the whole thing and were only satisfied when they had reduced the time to less than a second. That is really fast enough.

Find input field

If you want to find a specific sheet in the circuit diagram or a floor plan, simply enter the text you want to find in the fields of the table here. The entries displayed will be filtered accordingly immediately.

For example, entering .M13 will only display sheets that contain .M13 in the system identifier.

Profile list box

The Profile list box currently gives you access to the Internal and Customer profiles.

The profiles specify the order in which the file types are displayed, which files are output, and which files are included in the sequential page numbering.

Generate Table of Contents button

You can now start generating the table of contents by clicking the Generate Table of Contents button here in the Open – Navigator dialog box.

Table of Contents

The table of contents is now generated for the entire project and includes the page number in addition to the content summary and sheet number. The content summaries you entered in the circuit diagram in the placeholders “Content1” and “Content2” are combined into a single text in the table of contents and output as left-aligned text in the placeholder “Content.”

You can specify the sorting of documents, what you want to print, and which documents should receive consecutive page numbering in the profiles, which you can edit in the Project Print and PDF Export dialogs. Generating the table

of contents is also highly efficient and takes less than four seconds in the test project we created, which has a total of 1651 pages.

New subscription limit

To ensure that page numbering can also be output in the drawing frame, we have redesigned the frame drawings slightly and introduced the new placeholder texts “Page” and “NoPages” (stands for Number of pages).

In addition, we have now stored all texts in the frame drawings in English. These are or will be labeled in German by the program. Of course, we have also stored these texts in our dictionary in German, English, French, Turkish, Russian, and Chinese. By switching the output language, the frame texts are now also output in the corresponding translation, a must-have for internationally operating companies.

Continue to use existing frame drawings?

Of course, the old frame drawings still work as before, so you can continue working as usual, although the new functions for continuous page numbering of the entire project will then remain unused.

To make it as easy as possible for you, we have revised all frame drawings accordingly and included them as New Frame Drawings.tcj. With a standard installation, you will find these at: C:Program Files (X86)Treesoft OfficeProgramProjects. The file can be imported as usual via Projects > Manage > Reconstruct. The project is then called New Frame Drawings. Now you can select the revised drawing frames and copy them to your system project CAD, Frame Drawings.

If you don’t have time for this, no problem, just give us a call and for a flat fee of EUR 99.00 we will take care of everything.

Status bar with extended functionality

We have significantly enhanced the status bar at the bottom of the drawing during the upgrade to version 7.2. Frequently used functions such as setting grid dimensions and step dimensions, zooming, switching between floor plans, views, or layers, and the line type and line width list fields can now be accessed in the status bar, making them much quicker to reach.

In addition to the buttons for scrolling through the circuit diagrams, a comprehensive pop-up dialog box for layers is now also available in the status bar. This dialog clearly displays all schematic pages of a document with the content information stored in the drawing frame and the read-out plant and location identifiers. By clicking on the desired entry, you can quickly and easily navigate to the desired schematic page.

The command File > Switch Levels, key [E] now also opens the new pop-up dialog Levels.

Of course, this dialog box is also available in Treesoft CAD Building Services (see Importing floor plans with all layers).

Import floor plans with all layers

With the upgrade to Treesoft Office 7.2, the background image in Treesoft CAD now consists of multiple layers. When converting, you can now transfer all layers with the designations one-to-one. Using the newly implemented pop-up dialog Levels, these can then be made visible or invisible as desired in Treesoft CAD Building Services.

Building technology Evaluation Generate lists

The Evaluation menu contains the commands Positions, Circuits, Connections, and Cable Types for generating the corresponding lists. Previously, only the corresponding dialog box was called up here. Then you selected the floor plans and, in the position list, also selected a group, started the evaluation, and generated the lists. The active floor

plan is always preset as the default, and the group All Positions is preset for the position list. During the project planning phase, the lists are almost always generated for the active floor plan. In recent years, we have continued to optimize Treesoft CAD, and PCs have not become any slower, so we can now generate the lists directly using the default settings. If you want to generate the lists across all floor plans at the end, simply activate the floor plans and restart the evaluation.

This saves a lot of mouse clicks during the project planning phase, optimizes the workflow, and simply makes you faster.

Context-sensitive calls to the options dialog

In the past, the list of commands in a menu usually ended with the Settings command. This opened a dialog box where you could configure the settings for the commands listed in the menu.

However, users often make a number of settings one after the other, for example after installing software for the first time or when creating a new user. For the reasons mentioned here, Treesoft, like many other software providers, has combined all settings in an options dialog, with the individual dialogs structured in a tree so that they can be found quickly and easily accessed.

Basically, this is the right approach, although we have now backtracked a little. If there is a context-sensitive branch in the options dialog for a menu, we have added the Options command to that menu. This opens the options dialog and directly selects that branch.

Menu in the circuit diagram wizard	Branch in the options dialog
file	Circuit diagram > File
symbol	System > Icon
drawing	System > Drawing
Text	Circuit diagram > Text
Edit	Circuit diagram > Edit/Change
evaluation	Circuit diagram > Evaluation
Extras	Circuit diagram > File
Menus in the control cabinet wizard
file	Control cabinet assembly > File
view	Control cabinet structure > View/Scale
area	Control cabinet construction > Area
Design	Control cabinet construction > Design
electrical system	Control cabinet construction > Electrical
Extras	control cabinet construction
Menus in the Building Technology Assistant
floor plan	Building technology > Floor plan
area	Building technology > Edit/Change
electrical	Building technology > Electrical installation
evaluation	Building technology > Position list
Extras	building technology

If the selected branch has sub-branches, such as Options > Schematic > Evaluation, these are automatically expanded.

We quickly realized that this allowed us to speed up a number of workflows. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to ultimately move forward. We are confident that you will quickly come to appreciate this as much as we do.

Keyboard shortcuts Adjustments to new standards

Treesoft CAD has been around for over 36 years. Over this time, new standards for command calls have continually developed. We have taken this into account in each of our upgrades, ensuring that our software remains up to date and that you only ever have to learn one or two new keyboard shortcuts, which are then guaranteed to be used in a variety of other programs.

For example, I asked my son and one of his friends which keyboard shortcuts they would use to zoom. Both immediately replied with [CTRL]+[+], [CTRL]+[-], and [CTRL]+[0] to set the zoom to 1:1. These keyboard shortcuts are used in all web browsers for these functions, and believe me, young people all surf the Internet, which is why they know these keyboard shortcuts. If one of them later works with Treesoft CAD, they will know how to call up these commands without a manual. The advantage for you is that you don’t have to remember different keyboard shortcuts for identical commands in different programs, which is also good.

In the following table, we have listed all the changed command calls for you:

key combination	Function	Up to version 7.1
[CTRL]+[0]	Zoom 1:1	Set grid reference point
[CTRL]+[+]	Zoom in
[CTRL]+[-]	Zoom out
[B]	area	Flip through pages
[SHIFT]+[B]	Flip through pages
[CTRL]+[ALT]+[0]	Set grid reference point

We had to change the keyboard shortcut for setting the grid reference point to [CTRL]+[ALT]+[0] in order to free up the [CTRL]+[0] shortcut for the Zoom 1:1 command.


We firmly believe that with the introduction of the Open – Navigator dialog, the Go to Page command, now [SHIFT]+[B], will be used much less frequently than the Go to Area command, now [B]. All


of this is also workflow optimization, and it is often the little things that significantly improve the overall work experience.