CityCAD 2.1 Released

Holistic City Software has released CityCAD 2.1, a significant upgrade of the city design CAD application. This version contains several major improvements in performance and stability, as well as some exciting new features such as shading according to distance from certain land uses.

In CityCAD 2.1, blocks and city items can be shaded according to distance from a specific land use, or type of object such as a bus stop. They can also be shaded according to whether they comply with specified distance thresholds, for example whether a block is within 800m of a rail station. This means the designer can instantly identify problem areas and quickly gain a greater understanding of the overall liveability of a masterplan.

Other improvements include an extension to the custom parameters - these can now be applied to Routes and Nodes, as well as Blocks and Subdivisions. Elements in your model can also be shaded according to custom parameters, making it easier to keep track of customized categories or values in your city model.

CityCAD 2.1 comes with a 30-day free trial, and can be downloaded from http://www.holisticcity.co.uk/downloads. If your free trial has expired from using an earlier version, contact support@holisticcity.co.uk and a new trial licence will be sent.

New City Analysis Shading

In the image below, the blocks are shaded according to distance from a bus stop, making it easy to see which blocks are more accessible.

Image: pressinfo/citycad_shadingbydistance_city.png
Buildings shaded according to distance from bus stop

Summary of all new features introduced since June 2010

Drawing / Editing Features

• Improved DXF CAD Import - DXF Base Maps ('xrefs') can now be easily refreshed from source file.
• You can import a DXF CAD file and automatically convert into a number of City Items, placed at the correct location.
• Ortho Snap drawing constraints.
• New keyboard shortcuts - Ctrl-W (Zoom to Window), Ctrl-E (Zoom to Extents), Ctrl-I (Image-tracing snap settings) and Ctrl-D (DXF-tracing snap settings).
• New 'Reverse Direction' control when editing Streetscape Elements of a route.
• Analysis and Information Features
• New Liveability Shading features - shade blocks according to distance from services, land uses or city item types. Shade according to absolute distance, or based on Liveability thresholds.
• Custom Parameters extended to routes.
• Shading according to custom parameters.
• City Design Assistant Panel
• Revised Embedded Browser - relevant help articles and resources displayed according to user preferences.
• Online Database - link from CityCAD to improved online database of urban spaces and housing projects
• Toolbars
• Switch boundary line visibility between 'always invisible', 'always visible' or 'show if not hidden by blocks'
• Snaps Toolbar - select dxf or image tracing, and quickly toggle snaps on and off when drawing routes

Miscellaneous

• Higher performance graphics rendering and reduced memory use for blocks and trees. Improved render structures for larger numbers of routes.
• New alert when deleting custom parameters (with 'don't show this again' option)
• If free trial fails to activate, link to email client program provided to request licence code for trial.
• Many new cities added to internal database in Sun/Sky settings.
• Z-depth bias added to avoid visualization glitches when viewing very large scale blocks set at ground plane level.
• New DXF import dialog will suggest level of detail adjustments if a large file is being imported using the 'DXF-URB' method.
• Miscellaneous fixes and minor improvements.