Setting up your data for use with V5.8
Ray Smith
to you and you can fix yourself up to run as before. As every site has
small variations on their software setup, it was not practical to try
to do this setting up stuff automatically. We also didn’t wish to
wreck their working version of V5.7 in an attempt to do it
automatically.
So here goes…
Background
As you may be aware, the release of Windows Vista and Windows 7 has
changed the way the operating system works for computer users. It
tends to overwhelm most people with the extraordinarily high levels of
file security that are apparently for our own benefit. It is fair to
say that the incidence of virus and low level ‘hacking’ seems to have
reduced in recent years. In any case, for regular computer users, the
overhead is very high and the level of knowledge to manage it is
beyond most of us.
To simplify the use of our software we have changed the folder path
for the installation in an attempt to get ‘back to basics’. The new
version, V5.8 installs into its own folder structure directly off the
root folder of your C: drive – C:/AppliCad/<program name>/Programs.
All your user data – jobs and material files – are usually located in
C: drive – C:/AppliCad/<program name>/User.
After installation you have a further option of setting up a Corporate
folder so that material definitions and job files can be stored on a
shared/mapped drive on the server in the office, say a “Z:” drive and
the individual operator settings (screen colours etc) will still be in
the local drive under C:/AppliCad/<program name>/User. You set this
up under Tools > More…>System Preferences once the data has been setup
and the software installed.
A further wrinkle is the fact that we have added options to several
files so that you have greater control over certain materials and
items. For example you now have an option to define material ‘Gauge’
or thickness for flashing and trim. This has added a column in the
data file so the old data file with your data in it needs to be
converted to the new structure. There are several files with similar
small enhancements that will be converted automatically for you.
Typical Situation
Since new installations require some data files for new users to
practice with, we ship the software with some data files with sample
data and materials specified. These are in the C:/AppliCad/<program
name>/Programs folder. So when you first start up the software and
you haven’t copied your data files to the new folder location, the
software cannot find any data in the User folder, so it goes off and
finds the data in the Programs folder and uses that instead. It
appears that your data files have disappeared when in fact they are
safely tucked up where you left them when using V5.7.
NB: It is worth noting that the update to V5.8 leaves the v5.7
install completely untouched and working as it always has.
Using your old data files
To get the new version working with your old data, you need to copy it
from its current location, to the new location. For most people,
this will mean copying the data from C:/AppliCad_User to C:/AppliCad/
<program name>/User. This is a chance to tidy things up so I
recommend that you do not simply copy every single file across to the
new location.
As a start, open Windows Explorer and sort the files into a list by
Details. Then sort them by type. This makes it a lot easy to find
the files to copy. Start by copying all files with a .csv extension
to C:/AppliCad/<program name>/User. These will be your material data
files. Then copy all files with a .dab extension to C:/AppliCad/
<program name>/User. These are you roof models and job files.
You may also require a couple of .bin files if you’re doing labour and
tiles and shingles – typically Tiles.bin, Tiles4.bin, MLabour5.bin,
TLabour5.bin, Shingles.bin and Linestyles.bin.
To ensure that you do not get remnants of the sample data, I would
also delete the sample data files from the Programs folder. Navigate
to the C:/AppliCad/<program name>/Programs folder, sort the files by
type and go down to the list of .csv files. Highlight all but
DlgHelpFiles.csv, User ReportNames.csv and UserDrawingNames.csv, and
delete them.
At some stage when you are satisfied with V5.8 and that you have
everything you need where you need it, you will be able to archive the
old data and jobs and delete the V5.7.
Network Situation
If you’re running a network and your data is on the network server,
you need to delete the files as explained above, then tell the
AppliCad software where to find the current data files. First you
must right click on the short cut for V5.8, select Properties and set
the ‘Start in’ location and click Apply.
Nest start the software up by double clicking the short cut and go to
Tools>More…>System Preferences and set the path for your files.
Typically, both the User Folder and the Corporate Folder will be the
same. Read the manual for more details on how to configure for a
corporate setup.
The Temporary folder is where transitory files such as all those
pesky .bin files that are created by the software when jobs are costed
etc are now stored. This allows easy cleanup periodically.
From here, you should be working as before, only with the new version
of AppliCad. If you have any further questions, please drop our
support team a line immediately.
We’re confident that the new version will deliver fantastic new
features and a whole lot faster. Have fun.