From: jkummer@isis.cs.du.edu (James Kummer) Subject: REVIEW: DesignWorks Keywords: application, structured drawing, CAD Path: menudo.uh.edu Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix (sponsored by U. of Denver Math/CS dept.) Disclaimer1: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University of Disclaimer2: Denver for the Denver community. The University has neither Disclaimer3: control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users. Distribution: world Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications Reply-To: jkummer@isis.cs.du.edu (James Kummer) [Designworks is an object-oriented drawing program published by New Horizons Software that is similar to MacDraw on the Macintosh. It runs on all Amigas. - JLT3] At long last, an affordable object-oriented drawing program for the Amiga! I use a Macintosh at work, and have been waiting for at least four years for something comparable to 'MacDraw' to come available for the Amiga. I have long enjoyed the use of New Horizon's 'ProWrite' word processor, so when I received an introductory offer in the mail for their new structured drawing program, I immediately sent in my order. The package arrived two days ago. My expectations were fulfilled! The program will display in high, medium and low resolution, plus SuperHiRes and Productivity for KS 2.0. I couldn't verify the KS 2.0 modes, but HiRes is just my cup of tea. A tool box and pallette are displayed upon opening the program - these can be moved around, as you need to draw around them, or you can put them 'behind' the drawing until you need to access them. The drawing tools are rectangle, ellipse, straight-line, horizontal-vertical line, polygon, freehand-line, and text tool. Each object that you draw is independent of the others. You can reposition, resize, reshape, and rotate each object separate from all others. You can also flip (mirror image) objects horizontally or vertically. Objects can be grouped, so that they move and reshape as a group. Ungrouping is also available. And, you can lock objects so that they cannot be moved or resized. Lines may be drawn plain, or with arrowheads at one or both ends. Lines and polygon borders may have a range of thicknesses. In fact, you can vary the height and width of the lines independently, for a calligraphy effect. Colors are available for lines and polygon borders, as well for as area fill. The program provides for constructing your own multicolor fill patterns. Text can be produced in any of the fonts you have in your font directory. Text can be left- or tight-justified, or centered. A rectangular area may be defined for text, and word wrap is performed at the boundaries of the rectangle. Text can be produced in color, and rotated. Adjustable rulers and grid are provided, and if you select 'grid snap', then the objects you create or move will 'snap' to the nearest grid intersection. Objects may also be aligned with respect to one another, in the vertical and/or horizontal directions. Your drawing can be composed of layers, which you can work on one at a time. Layers can be displayed or hidden. Objects within a layer can be moved in front of or behind other objects in the same layer. Zooming in and out is supported, so that you can do very detailed work, and also be able to see the overall composition of a large drawing. And, although I have tried neither, support for macros and AREXX is provided. Limitations and quirks: You must have KS 1.2 or higher, and a minimum of 0.5 MB memory is required. Rotations can only be performed in plus-or-minus ninety-degree increments. You can edit a text object; if you have rotated or flipped it, you must first restore it to its right-side-up orientation before you can edit it. The one real 'quirk' I found is, if you select 'centered' or 'right-justified' for text, and then click once with the mouse at the location on the drawing where you want the text to be positioned, the orientation reverts to 'left-justified'. You can always go back and reselect 'centered' or 'right-justified' after you have placed the cursor, but then the location of the text is not as you desired. Another way around this anomaly is to 'drag' out an area where the text is to be positioned, in which case the selection does not revert to 'left-justified'. Selecting 'centered' or 'right-justified' for an existing block of text also has the expected result. This is a small glitch that I can live with, but I do hope that New Horizons (are you listening, NH?) fixes it in the very next revision. All in all I am very pleased with the program. At a suggested list price of $125, I think it is very reasonable, and recommend it highly. Be assured that I have no ties to New Horizons, other than as a satisfied customer. BTW, a full-page advertisement for the product appears on page 9 of the August issue of AmigaWorld. -- -- Regards ------ Jim Kummer --- (disclaimer applies) _______________________________________________________________________ (1st choice) jkummer@nyx.cs.du.edu \// insert favorite tidbit of (in a pinch) kummer@pogo.den.mmc.com // wry humor here