TAD Docs

Version 6.9.1.10

• This version of TAD now exports to DXF in three ways. Two of them were available earlier too: One was to export as simple lines, and the other exported as 3DFACES The 2nd method is useful for importing into rendering software. The third method available now is when you use the main DXF export function under the File menu. If you happen to use a filename that ends in …3D.dxf then it will export the data as extruded polylines. NOTE that it will NOT place end “caps” on the extrusions. It will also NOT place the pinned objects into the right location (Pinning is properly done only when you export as 3DFACES) Read our extensive documentation regarding DXF export here

Version 6.9.1.8

• TAD 's help system no longer uses the old Internet Explorer. This is because Microsoft has discontinued it. Instead you must have Chrome (or Chrome compatible browser such as Brave or Chromium) installed on the computer. You can choose between Chrome or Brave or Chromium from the application settings. TAD usually will detect the browser location and start it in “app” mode (i.e. without address bar) so that you can have a distraction free experience when reading the help file. In some cases, TAD may not be able to locate the browser it needs to use. In that case, you can place a special text file with just one line: That contains the browser executable fullpath. The name of the file is chrome.location.txt or brave.location.txt or chromium.location.txt Such a file must be in the same folder as the main executable of TAD

Version 6.9.1.6

• TAD now has 2 kinds of interfaces. When you start TAD (or when there are no models active) you can go to the Help menu and switch TAD into a “Ribbon menu” mode that some may find easier. To switch back, again no models should be active. Go to the “Help” tab and switch back using a button there. TAD installation is now very easy. It does not bother you with any authentication. But when you run TAD for the first time, it will check your Discord credentials used at our teamTAD community there. Or you can run TAD in demo mode by giving a valid email address.

Version 6.9.0.1

• TAD now has an internal group chat which is quite powerful for people working in an office to chat with each other. Even if the users are spread across the Internet. Sending group messages can be done only from within TAD. But we are soon implementing a feature that someone in the group can read messags from outside inside a browser (cant send messages though). Useful for an architect to read ongoing chatter happening inside an office. Along with that; as before, you can also configure TAD to embed your office chat (such as Slack, etc) if it can be run inside an IE window inside TAD (Some chats may not allow this, as IE is often considered pariah). It also has several UI fixes. The old textured background is now gone. When you start TAD; the main background color would be as per the time slot of the day. We've divided a 24 hour into 5 slots of time (midnight - 7 am, 7am - 12noon, 12 noon-7pm, 7pm - 10pm and 10pm to midnight) ; and each has its own color. You can customize it by writing the hexadecimal (these starting with $ E.g Fuschia would be $FF00FF) – write 5 lines in a file called backcolors.txt and saving it in the same location as that of the main executable (the bin folder) Of course if you always want the same color; all the 5 lines would be the same in that file – but you need to give 5 colors. Cannot skip any line.

Version 6.8.9.1

• TAD version 6.8.9.1 released. It has a powerful “Multipage Output” capability: Create a PDF/SVG with many pages; each page containing a drawing of some part (or whole) of TAD files, in scale! As this is a brand new feature; there could be some suggestions/issues. Let us know

Version 6.8.9.0

• This has a major feature: The TAD Workbook. Now TAD gives you a mini-spreadsheet for you to pick up values that TAD calculates for you. You can even use the usual Excel formulae such as “=sum(…)” etc and perform calculations. The workbook can be saved separately. Note that all these advanced features of TAD uses a “token” system. You can fetch a time-limited token from https://tad.in.net/goodies We are trying to collect some funds before we go open source. Hope you will support us!

Version 6.8.8.8

• A small bug in the free rotation of object/s by dragging the 2nd helper around the architect is now removed. Another tiny bug on creating shapes on a grid also solved. Several UI improvements have been done. Now the splash screen goes off on its own (the first time only) in a minute. A digital clock is available on the splash screen when you click on “Help|About”

Version 6.8.8.6

• Now when you switch on the grid, if you use the mouse to create objects; the size would be based on multiples of the stepsize. A tiny bug in the last step size has been corrected now

Version 6.8.8.5

• Now dragging objects over onto the “architect” is more nuanced. TAD determines which of the four corners of the architects shape should the first helper snap on to! Now, by default TAD does NOT move the architect when dragging objects. If you want the older behaviour, you can go to the application settings dialog and uncheck that checkbox. Lots of small UI improvements and speed improvements

Version 6.8.8.4

• Small UI improvements, and one major functionality improvement: Now if you drag a rectangle on an empty area of the site; a new rectangle object can be created in current class. (Earlier, it used to change the stepsize of the architect) So for creating new shapes you need not go thru the create menu. So now, to change architect stepsize, dragging a rectangle in an empty area of the site, with the ALT key pressed will change the architect's stepsize.

Version 6.8.8.0

• Lots of UI improvements. TAD now can associate a database (such as an SQlite database or even others) with the model being worked on. That will allow you to fill out properties of classes/objects in lot of finer detail. Message boxes that gets displayed in TAD is now changed. It can make use of the translation service from Bing or Google. A simple token system to activate some of the functionalities in TAD has been put in place. You can get these tokens free or as per your donation, from https://tad.in.net/goodies

Version 6.8.7.4

• Now you can give a full calculation when setting height or level of class or object. Note that you can always mix in ft and inches into any calculation. Internally, TAD will convert everything to meters. So if you give 0.3+1'3.25“ It will use the value as 0.68735 That means it intelligently detects 1'3.25” and converts that part into meters. A directory watch feature is now available to keep a watch on the folder which is used for collaborating between others working with you on TAD. Lots of small UI/Ux improvements, and lots of improvements in the documentation too

Version 6.8.7.0

• This is a major milestone! Now multiple designers can collaborate on the same project; even if the collaborators are across the Internet. See the documentation on collaboration here http://docs.teamtad.com/collaboration Now searching both classes as well as objects are possible. Start the commandline with the backslash; and if there is one backslash then the search is for class; if it starts with two backslashes; it is for an object. You need not specify the complete name of the class or the object – the initial letters will do. Also, if you give an empty search (using one backslash for last class search or two backslash for last object search) then the respective previous search is repeated

Version 6.8.6.6

• TAD's “Lock the sub-tree of the current class” feature now more refined and mature. Some subtle bugs were removed. This is in preparation for the next major version; which will see a new kind of collaboration.

Version 6.8.6.0

• TAD now has a “Lock the sub-tree of the current class” feature. This is useful to focus your edit/creation only in one part of TAD file. This version has improved the “grid” feature too – Now when you switch on the grid, if you move the “architect” using the mouse, it gets magnetically attracted to the nearest grid point.

Version 6.8.5.7

• A new feature introduced. Now you can search for a class by starting a command (yellow popup command line) with a backslash. TAD will search for the class by the name given after the backslash. It will try to search for an exact match – or at least the first one that whose initial part of the name matches the search. If only backslash is given, then the last search term is again searched to the next one. The installer is now more sophisticated. You can do practically all the registration and authentication just-in-time as the installer gets started. So the old registration form is now removed from the main website. Email is now optional, as your registration is verified using an OTP (called e-code in our case) via the Discord teamTAD community.

Version 6 .8.5.5

• A minor change regarding the system used for translation. Now to ensure that the Google translation system is used; add :g to the language. For example; if “hi” (hindi) is the language; then type hi:g in the language field and it will open the Google translator instead of the default Bing translator. This field is available both in the “Preferences” (also known as Settings) dialog, as well as on the “Tip of the Day”dialog

Version 6 .8.5.4

• Translation service thru Google implemented was changed to translation thru Bing. There were some situations, when Google will NOT do the translation and you may get a blank page. So we changed the approach for translation. Now, we have worked out a system by which you would get a translation using the Bing Translator If you want to go back to the earlier Google translation; then set the language with an additional parameter: If “fr” is the language you want the translation in; you can add “fr-g” to get the translation in Google instead of Bing. But as stated earlier; Google sometimes does not provide the translation in the internal browser inside TAD. One more tip: You can use the application Settings (Ctrl-Enter) and set the parameter to open the translation in the regular browser instead of the internal embedded one. In that case, you would always get the Google and Bing translation systems. In future, we will give more options.

Version 6 .8.5.0

• Translation service thru Google implemented. This is quite powerful. Curl time out (-m parameter) is now respected. A file called curltimeout.txt is created in the bin folder and if needed, the user can adjust the timeout there. By default it is 9 seconds. Cleaned up Tips quite a lot. The “Fetch”button was not working and that has been rectified. Cleaned up bitmap display. Now you can browse to other folders where sketches are kept

Version 6.8.4.0

• Stepsize can be changed using the stepsize control itself. That accepts ONLY numericHelp hints for architect, and 2 helpers. Scaling of objects is now available One rare, tiny bug removedImproved some of the icons – blue/purple theme generally. Suggestions welcome

Version 6.8.3.0

• A powerful and yet localhost server is now available in this version onward. This is used to drive the tutorials. We will supply donors a zip file containing the tutorials. If the donation is $15.00 USD or more, we will give the tutorials in your language of choice (via Google Translate) TAD Designer Lite now has a powerful macro system that can drive most of the UI actions from a browser that connects to the localhost server. A localhost server is one that works ONLY on your computer and nowhere else. So you are sure your data will NOT go to the Internet without your knowledge

Version 6.8.2.0

• Now you can import SVG paths (with flattened curves, if present) into TAD. Explained here The installation process is also a lot more smoother. Next version would be even more smoother!

Version 6.8.1.2

• TAD Designer Lite now has a powerful installation system. It will check if you have a membership at our teamTAD community at Discord. Once you install, you can run the software straightaway – as the installer has done the job of authenticating you. Those who were using the Mattermost chat system, if they upgrade, will need to take a membership at Discord. We have more information on Discord on our documentation site here, and there are very good reasons for shifting!

Version 6.8.1.0

• TAD Designer Lite now uses the excellent Discord system for the teamTAD community. The older Mattermost based chat system has become too large, and slow. That chat would be reaching its end of life on Oct 31, 2020 and after that our teamTAD community would only be on Discord

Version 6.8.0.6

• Tiny bug in the bug/suggestion dialog. Now it works well.

Version 6.8.0.5

• Minor tweaks in the UI.

Version 6.8.0.2

• From version 6.8 onward, TAD now has the capability of exporting the entire TAD model as computer language source code and binary. This is a very powerful feature and now TAD models can be worked upon using Javascript, PHP, Python, Lua, C#, C++ and so on… See this video https://youtu.be/I-hFu8x6RfU and see the docs here http://docs.teamtad.com/doku.php/haxe

Version 6.7.8.4

• Some low resolution monitors had an issue with the creation dialog. This has now been rectified

Version 6.7.7.1

• This version now has an excellent Sketching web utility. Instead of creating shapes individually inside TAD; you can now create a set of shapes that you want to sketch together. This is done on our website. Then you can copy those shapes on your computer clipboard; and return back to TAD in order to paste them. Once pasted; you can further work on the same set and do all the calculations, 3D etc inside TAD. We encourage all developers to create such utilities to import shapes into TAD. The documentation has all the details; including the simple format that is expected to be copied to the system clipboard

Version 6.7.6.0

• TAD 6.7.6.0 has been released now. It has several important changes. We are finalizing the collaboration system. In this version, we have provided a neat screenshot image creation feature – it captures the screen as per your command. You can use it to share the status of your ongoing work to others See the docs at http://docs.teamtad.com/doku.php/mirrorsite Very soon, a sophisticated and yet flexible method for realistic collaboration will be available. Please report bugs/suggestions from within TAD itself. Enjoy!

Version 6.7.5.0

• Now hip-roof modelling also done. See sample file hiproofsample.td5 Yon plane default is now 1000 instead of 100 so you would also be able to view the large TAD models in the 3D draft view. (This was available earlier too; but you needed to set the yon plane to 1000 manually) Lots of small UI improvements.

Version 6.7.0.5

• Now the niggardly issue with the class properties (subst(…) and notes(…)) is over. Installer now sets the registry for internal browser version number too; so that Mattermost c hat can be loaded directly inside TAD itself. Default TAD file now has reference to the sample page for object notes. Some cosmetic changes done

Version 6.7.0.0

• TAD Designer Lite version 6.7.0.0 has been released. It now has excellent merge and outline capabilities. This should be much faster and without errors. Context Sensitive Help has been made more relevant to subtler UI contexts. Now right click menu of objects list has useful options like delete the object, etc.

Version 6.6.5.4

• Lots of small UI improvements. We also managed to clean up the documentation a lot more. Please use the TIPS system to get a good start on TAD. When TAD starts, usually the tips dialog is given. There is a fetch button on that dialog. Click on that to fetch the latest tips from our server. There are now 46 separate tips that join together for a good intro to TAD. enjoy!

Version 6.6.5.3

• The tips system has been improved. New tips have been written. Now more will be added soon. As the tips are bit larger, the tip dialog is also now bigger – Some more minor cosmetic changes. Rotation of objects now has a proper explanation

Version 6.6.5.0

• TAD now has a brand new set of icons for the user interface. This is a major change in the UI. I hope those who used the earlier set would quickly find the meaning of the new set . Cleaned up lots of clutter. Some minor bugs removed.

Version 6.6.0.1

• Subtle changes in the UI and and Aerial Navigator. Now when you click inside the Navigtor (instead of marking a rectangle), it will pan to that location with the existing zoom settings. Earlier, the default thickness for “envelopes” was 2 pixels. This has been changed to 1 . There was a subtle UI bug in the way selections were sometimes rendered: Instead of rendering in blue dotted, it used to occasionally render with a solid line. Hopefully this is now corrected.

Version 6.6.0.0

• Major uprade. A brand new Aerial navigator introduced. Using this navigator, you can get the entire project inside a small navigator window. When you mark out a rectangle in there, you will see the file zoomed to that rectangle. We introduced this because the regular scrollwheel zoom up/down is slow. Suggestions welcome on this navigator. Some UI regarding “beak alignment” also improved (Now the ALT key is needed along with right-click for beak alignment to happen)

Version 6.5.6.3

• There was a bug in handling passwords containing special characters. This has been handled correctly now. This is an important update for those who have used characters such as #, $ etc in their passwords

Version 6.5.6.2

• There was a bug in double clicking and opening TAD files directly from Windows Explorer. This has been rectified.

Version 6.5.6.1

• News button available on the main toolbar. Authentication made more robust. “Check for update” is now working fine. Some minor improvements/cleanup here and there

Version 6.5.5.0

• TAD now can import shapes from polylines present in DXF files. They have to be made in a special manner see DXF2TAD Removed a bug in calculation of areas/perimeter for some shapes which had curves. Improvement in speed of the TAD-Interprocess Controller that handles the “td:” links inside browsers. Now lot of actions of TAD can be directed from such special hyperlinks in web-pages and wiki-pages. For example; you can actually write out a wiki page for your staff; and they need not get too worried about the underlying file system The special clickable 'td:' links handles many of the file actions

Version 6.4

• TAD now has many “verbs” inside the custom URL. Load tadprotocol.html into a browser that is installed in the main folder after your run the installer. TAD can now create arbitrary polylines from clipboard, or the create menu. TAD also shows the TAD chat within the program itself. It can also be configured to show your own office chat from your own private cloud server

Version 6.3.0.26

• Now the TAD custom URL protocol has been implemented. You can create web pages with such special TAD links (starting with td: … ) and the link will do actions directly inside TAD. Some creation bugs removed. See docs here

Version 6.2.0.0

• More context sensitive help has been configured. Now you can get help for right-click on architect, the yellow headsup command-line, etc

Version 6.1.0.10

• Now you can associate TAD files on your disk to be loaded into TAD by double clicking .td4 or .td5 filenames. You can also drag and drop TAD files into the status-bar inside TAD and they would get opened inside.

Version 6.1.0.8

• Context sensitive help can be displayed within the application itself. Or you can use the settings to show it in your regular browser
• Bug tracking can be done both for your project as well as for TAD overall
• Small improvements in UI

Version 6.1.0.7

• Virtualight re-introduced. The TAD Dashboard is now at http://tiny.cc/taddash We are no longer using Favro. All registrations MUST be done into our TAD Chat system

Version 6.1.0.4

• When you specify a URL for the notes of an object/class, TAD will take you to the said URL along with the specified object name and classname on a query string. By default it is the same query string as seen in a google search; q=“<ObjName>”+“<classname>” So you will have to give https://google.com/search for the notes of the object. If your specified url itself contains the string &q= then no object name or classname would be added. The benefit of this feature is that you can point the collaborators of your design, to a website containing detailed design info of the object being designed. The query string can be configured if you want.

Version 6.1.0.3

• Minor changes. The object notes feature is now lot more polished

Version 6.1.0.2

• Hope you are all enjoying use of TAD. The current version is now 6.1.0.2 Now you can give notes for objects. If you give it at the class level, then it must be a URL. If you give it at the object level, it can be either a URL or some small sentence directly written in the object property tab page. Use this feature to guide all the others involved in the project on design guidelines of your architectural elements. You can even use it to point to a issue-tracker specifically for that particular object/class

Version 6.1.0.1

• Major version update! Now if you right click on “Architect” inside TAD Designer Lite, it is moved to it's earlier location (Remembers last 10 steps or so) Now undo history is preserved across file-saves. That means you make changes, save the file, go home to sleep, come back and load the same file – presto even the undo history is back! TAD projects can be associated with any issue-tracker (Our favorite one is Favro) Associate the URL of a particular collection at Favro to a TAD model – then you can keep track of what is going on in your project too

Version 6.0.0.95

• One more built-in Predicate is now available in ARDELA. httpstr(URL,Out) Data flow- (i,o) If you supply in the first parameter, a URL (even an https url) it will retrieve the contents using the “GET” protocol in the second parameter Some additional cosmetic changes also made

Version 6.0.0.94

• The web host for the news system is now located at another server. Minor changes

Version 6.0.0.93

• All the various social media and website links are now available from inside TAD Designer itself. The initial news display is more graceful to the user, if the Internet is slow or not available. From 6.0.0.92 onwards registration is now verified against either TAD Chat system as well as the Favro based TAD Dashboard

Version 6.0.0.92

• Now people can take membership either at the chat system or at the TAD Dashboard (which collects bugs, suggestions, etc). That is hosted by Favro http://tiny.cc/taddashboard At some point, we may limit membership into this TAD Chat system. We got feedback that possibly, very large number of people all chatting at the same time may not make sense. Hence this change on how the membership works. Initial users of the version 6.x of TAD would all be there on chat – but maybe in a few months, the membership there would stop. Future members would need to register themselves at the aforesaid TAD Dashboard page hosted by Favro

Version 6.0.0.91

• The Bugs and Suggestions tracking system has been moved from myjetbrains.com to the excellent KanBan system from favro.com
• Now TAD includes the excellent open-source curl utility for fetching and posting to the Internet. Expect to see more deeper usage of curl by TAD (It doesn't matter to the end users. This is just a useful technicality) See https://curl.haxx.se/
• Now you should see interactive tutorials that would work from within TAD Designer Lite, using a scripting language called AutoIt. See http://www.autoitscript.com A sample AutoIt script is present in the BIN folder after installation (extension .au3)
• You can now intermix dimensions in feet and inches, when moving architect. However, there is a limitation: It will accept only up to three decimal places in the inch value and not more. So 1.5', 1'6“ will be both acceptable and both same. 0'1.55” is accepted but 1'6.3356“ will not be accepted. For dimensions less than 1 feet, you will have to specify 0' also

Version 6.0.0.90

• The command to create classes via clipboard is now more sophisticated. Now you can specify like this

[ocl(“First”,”Project“,[],”“,”“),ocl(“Second”,”First“,[],”“,”“),ocl(“Third”,”Second“,[],”“,”“)] which is thinner form of the cl(…) domain of TAD. It uses names of classes instead of Cref and if you use ”“ it would get deposited on the current class as its parent. Note: The clipboard is destructively cleaned up of all newline characters. You can spread the ocl(…) definitions over several lines as long as the compressed syntax is correct

Version 6.0.0.89

• Now there is a proper installer for TAD Designer Lite. The installation procedure is much simpler

Version 6.0.0.88

• The latest news on TAD is picked up from the chat system and deposited at http://news.teamtad.com It is also available inside TAD Designer when you star the programme

Version 6.0.0.87

• One surprising bug removed. It was to do with export to 3D formats. For some reason, all 3D exports were creating 0 byte files. I traced this to the way Windows 10 behaved. It may or may not be a bug in some user's installation as it is to do with the way Windows locates a particular DLL file in its OpenGL system. In my case, it was a problem. So I played safe and ensured that TAD would pick up this file in the correct manner, whatever be the situation.

Version 6.0.0.86

• License TOS now shifted to the documentation site.

Version 6.0.0.85

• Implemented beak alignment … Say you have two objects, “A” and “B” . Now you rotate and move “B” so that one corner of “B” is exactly snapped to one corner of “A”. Now that arrangement forms a bird's beak kind of angle with the edges between “A” and “B” … Because you had freshly moved “B”, it would be the current object and one of the helpers is at the corner of the bird-beak. Now when you right-click on the edge of “A”, you would find that “A” magically aligns itself to the angle of the other edge (which was the previous current edge on “B”). This is very useful to align objects to the same angle
• There is another useful command similar to above, which is simpler. Type 0.115 in TAD Designer Lite and that would appear in the yellow command line Now without closing the yellow command line, when you right click on another object, that object would automatically shift to the first one and moreover it would also be offset by 0.115! It would do the required beak rotation if so needed
• If you shift-right-click on an object, then the first helper of the current object shifts to the vertex you were pointing to in the other object You can easily use it to “trace” or wrap one object around a set of objects

Version 6.0.0.84

• Authentication check is more stringent than before. Make sure you always use your own office ID (which is kept in the file teamtad.id) … Do NOT manually edit teamtad.id on your own, else you may lose control over your own files. Internally, teamtad.id is used to put a stamp into your own data files. This ensures that your data is in your own control. Just in case someone steals your file from your office, it will not open in another installation of TAD

Version 6.0.0.83

• Toolbars when rearranged, will retain their rearranged positions when you restart the program
• Selection thru ardela code implemented. See documentation here: selectWithCode
• Colors picked up from colorconfig.dat

Take a look at the comments left in colorconfig.dat to see how the color of “chajja” was changed to a specific color. Note that comments start with the % sign and goes to end of the line. You need to format the files with one instruction per line as shown in colorconfig.dat

Version 6.0.0.82

• Now update check is not automatic.
• Implemented a silent error report for Net problems

Version 6.0.0.81

• The first one released on Jan 26, 2017 at the Ooty Programme