TAD Docs

TAD from version 6.8 onwards has an excellent inbuilt Haxe code converter. This allows programmers to develop very rich applications OUTSIDE of the TAD software.

When you use the File|Export to Code… option, TAD will help you convert the entire TAD model you are working on into Haxe code. Moreover, it can carry out additional steps too using the Haxe compiler – such as directly producing the source code and/or binary libraries and executables in several different computer languages!.

When exporting in such a manner; all the object and class properties set with the GUI (Graphic User Interface) of TAD would be directly converted. If you happened to give some additional ARDELA code to enrich your data further in the ARDELA editor of the class or object; those will NOT get exported.

However if you use those ARDELA editors to insert a special comment of this format into those ARDELA editors; then that would be treated as additional Haxe code; and would be exported into the correct location of the generated Haxe source code file. Note that TAD gives you three different ARDELA editors: One for the inheritable ARDELA section of the class, then there is one for the non-inheritable ARDELA section and thirdly there is one for the objects own self-code. The following syntax can be used in any of these editors.

/***Haxe
     //This line would be exported to the generated Haxe code
//Haxe***/

Why such a route?
The modeling system used in TAD is very different from what is seen in other BIM and design software. The author of TAD, Sabu Francis, believes in Just-in-time modelling – that means, the writer of a modeling software (in this case; Sabu Francis) cannot really determine the properties that are assigned by the designer of the model. All the assignment of properties would happen just-in-time by the designer and not by the author of the software. Therefore, a TAD model is not just plain data. It is intricately tied up with code that is used to further enrich the data. That code is largely determined just-in-time by the designer using the GUI given by TAD. You can also use the ARDELA editors to enrich the data even further, if you so wish

What happens to ARDELA?
Note that the inbuilt ARDELA scripting is also available and will not really go away. ARDELA is useful when you don't want to share your model with outsiders. For e.g. you may be designing a consulate or a prison – and obviously the details of such sensitive projects should not get leaked out. In such a case, you would be restricted to use only ARDELA for your calculations and analytics.

In short, when you are very strict about the privacy of your data; then you would use the internal ARDELA scripts. At some point we will release an ARDELA compiler too. That would help people develop ARDELA add-ons that can be plugged into the TAD environment itself.

There is a caveat here: This is explained further in Future Directions for TAD