OCAD 9 Course Planning Tool

[Red Adder]

Does anyone else have the problemette I'm experiencing ? I'm in the initial planning stage and therefore changing the position and usage of controls quite a lot and find the listing of courses using a site valuable. Well I would if it was accurate as it quite often (though apparently haphazardly) lists courses that don't use a site - or even all the courses. Using optimising function or even closing and re-opening the file don't make any difference.

Any ideas / solutions (I don't consider buying OCAD 10 a solution BTW).

[Roger]

Don't know if it would solve your problem, but I regard OCAD 10 CS (i.e. just the course setting module) as affordable by a planner / controller, unlike the full OCAD 10 that's clearly aimed at dedicated mappers.

OCAD 10 CS works fine with OCAD 9 maps. You have to rely on the mapper(or the holder of a full OCAD 9 licence) to implement any tweaks to the map, but this may not be a bad thing.

[MIE]

I haven't seen that problem in OCAD9 although I have occasionally had other
hiccoughs of varying complexity and awkwardness.

Other than Roger's comment, you could fire off an e-mail to
OCAD and see if they will give you an answer (other than to upgrade
to OCAD10).

The other option, if you are in the early stages of planning, is to download PurplePen.
It is free and quite good as well as being easy to use.

[Big Jon]

With regard to affordability I am surprised all orienteers don't go for Condes - its a far cheaper option as the club gets a licence and any club member can download it as long as they get the appropriate club log in code.

[The Loofa]

Red Adder. You are not alone. had exactly the same problem a couple of weeks ago. Or to be more precise our planner did, and I could see it on the file after she'd mailed me the courses. Something of a pain. No idea of a solution though - looks like mailing OCAD themselves may be needed.

[ianandmonika]

CONDES seems a better option to me because of the freedom amongst users with no licence restrictions. Purple Pen also got a strong following in local clubs and that is free. Both are easy to use for planners and both OK for printing from.

[andypat]

The other advantage of Condes for me is that even with OCAD 8 only, I can open and plan courses on OCAD 9 map files even though I cant open them on OCAD.

[ianandmonika]

Yes, I forgot that about CONDES - you don't need to have OCAD program loaded to use it, but you can still import OCAD maps into CONDES for planning courses. Lack of licence restrictions I mentioned was within the same club - the club has a licence but unlimited use for its members.

[SteveE]

If Condes and PurplePen are both so good, why should the local Club pay for a Condes License? Our local club encourages most planners at level D events to use PurplePen. Even those mappers who have access to OCAD are recommended to use PPen for its ease of use.

This also provides consistency for our in-house map printing who receive maps in a similar format each time. It also enables Planners across the club to share any issues if we're all using the same technology.

[ianandmonika]

Already had a CONDES licence. We encourage use of CONDES, but university puts on events for us and they use Purple Pen. But if you know Condes, then PP is easy to use. Similar logic.

[Red Adder]

Searching google for purple pen offers you first a site selling "gentleman's medicinal products".

[orient]

The direct link for purple pen is: http://purplepen.golde.org/ or if you dont like clicking links: purplepen dot golde dot org

[Ant W]

Searching google for purple pen offers you first a site selling "gentleman's medicinal products".

Slightly worryingly, that actually is the Purple Pen site that orient refers to! Presumably it was hacked at some point.

[Scott]

If Condes and PurplePen are both so good, why should the local Club pay for a Condes License?

There are things PurplePen still can't do - most obviously gaffling, for which I've found Condes much more intuitive than OCAD - although PurplePen does at last have a workable way of doing map exchanges, which I think was its biggest drawback for a lot of clubs.

Also, the print quality when printing direct from PurplePen used to be not quite as good as printing from OCAD, although I don't know if this has now been fixed. I generally plan in PurplePen, and then export then course files to OCAD and print from there.