From TAD 6.7.7.0 we have introduced a new feature in TAD for quickly creating one or more shapes in TAD

TAD internally has its own shape creation system. That is quite elaborate and would be useful for all kinds of finer handling of the creation of shapes. But some people wanted a quicker way of insertion of new shapes. Hence this new feature was provided

This can be used to bring in shapes through the system clipboard (i.e. the usual CTRL-C way of copying text). The text that is to be copied has to follow a particular syntax; as explained in the Polyline creation of the Creation Dialog

For example; copy the following text, and then invoke the menu-item “Import shapes from system clipboard” which is inside the Edit menu, and you would get a 5 sided figure named Poly created wherever the architect is located

=Poly[0.0,0.0,3.0,0.0,3.0,3.0,2.0,6.0,0.0,3.0,1.3,1.3]

Note that the first character of each line in the clipboard has to be the equals-to sign. Also, there cannot be any space in the name of the object

As you may have guessed; the list of numbers you see are the x,y coordinates of the shape. The coordinates 0,0 would be for the location of the architect… That means, the values are always with respect to the location of the architect. The polyline is always closed. Please ensure that you give at least 3 coordinates or TAD would crash!

We have already created a nice tiny utility called a “TAD Sketcher” which works online, This sketcher allows you to create any number of shapes really quickly; which you can then insert into your TAD file. This sketcher is at https://tad.in.net/goodies/tadsketcher0.5.html

See a video on Youtube on this https://youtu.be/HLWae3rjwmY

Though you would need the Internet to go to that location in your browser; once it has been loaded in your computer browser; it will work even if the computer's Internet connection is broken

The utility allows you to add any number of shapes. Each shape you add first appears as a square in the top left-corner of that page; with a random filled color. You can click into the shape and drag it to your desired location. Other shapes you create would be for other rooms in your project. Each shape can be dragged around and it magically snaps onto the edges of the other shapes

Once you have eye-balled the design; you would select one shape; whose horizontal dimension would represent a real world value (say 3.5 metres) You would need to specify that and then click on 'Copy TAD Shapes' button. Then it would know how to scale the drawing accordingly. Moreover once the scale is established, now you can quickly examine the dimensions of other rooms – If you are not happy; you can edit/move/delete them as per your requirements

Once you are satisfied; click again on the same button to copy the freshest information of these shapes. Now turn your attention to your TAD file which is to be opened (obviously) in TAD Designer Lite. Now, as explained earlier; you need to use the aforementioned Insert shapes from system clipboard

Note that the system clipboard MUST have lines that are as per the above specification. Each shape is on its own line; and you need to ensure that each line starts with the = (equals-to) sign; and the rest of the syntax is as shown earlier

Very soon, the Internet would see many such websites that can insert shapes into TAD; thus increasing the power of quickly creating designs in TAD