Welcome to the first edition of the SoftPlan e-newsletter! We have been listening to you, our customers, and we want to strive to keep you informed of SoftPlan news, promotions, and Technical Tips. Also included is a SoftPlan Survey so be sure to complete the survey to give us your feedback. To gain valuable information about SoftPlan read on…

SoftPlan Winners - Schools that utilize the SoftPlan Educational package in their curriculum have found great success this past year at regional and local Architectural Drafting Competitions. Students who use SoftPlan have an edge over their competitors because they can draft houses and make changes much more quickly than students using other CAD software. SoftPlan students can then spend more time focusing on their design rather than the actual drafting. Here are some of the recent winners (click here to continue article).

This segment highlights commands or techniques that may have escaped notice from our users. This month's command is Set Distance Between. Located under Dimension with the default keyboard shortcut B, Set Distance Between was added with Version 13. Between is intended to exactly position items that are not going to be dimensioned as such on the final drawing.

On a porch, for example, the columns should be 5’ apart; the final drawing should then be 5’-8” dimensioned to the center of the post.

Type B to select Between, pick one side of one post then the opposite side of the other post, and input the distance. In previous versions you would have to change the extension options, pull the extensions, run the dimension, edit the dimension, and finally erase the extensions and dimension.

Between will even allow the change in distance to be “split” equally over the two objects.