OCAD 11 file compatibility

[Big Jon]

Yes, it's the lack of a club licence for OCAD 11 which is the problem

Agreed, but the near equivalent to a club licence is the pack of 10 OCAD 11 CS licences they sell for 430 Swiss Francs, or £28.53 per licence at today's exchange rate [NB "CS" stands for "course setting", i.e. the OCAD equivalent of Purple Pen or Condes]

15-20 events a year plus 10-15 training sessions = 30 - 40 people involved in planning and controlling.... 10 licences doesn't meet that need. OCAD need to get their act together if they want to have any presence in the future in course planning software.

[MIE]

There is nothing that prevents a club getting multiple packs of 10, but
that still doesn't compare with PurplePen (free).
I am not able to comment in comparison with CONDES, which, I suspect, is cheaper
than 2 OCAD CS 10 packs.

[RichardE]

Yes, it's the lack of a club licence for OCAD 11 which is the problem

Agreed, but the near equivalent to a club licence is the pack of 10 OCAD 11 CS licences they sell for 430 Swiss Francs, or £28.53 per licence at today's exchange rate [NB "CS" stands for "course setting", i.e. the OCAD equivalent of Purple Pen or Condes]

Purple Pen does everything we need for course setting, although I agree that's a good price . We need OCAD 11 for mapping using digital elevation data.

[DJM]

Purple Pen does everything we need for course setting

... and no doubt this is why it's proving popular.

But this got me wondering just what it is about Condes 9 and OCAD 11CS which encourages some clubs to purchase them when the alternative is free. Would, for example, Purple Pen be good enough for the sophistication and complexity of a Scottish 6 Day, or the JK Relays or, indeed, WOC?

I've no idea of the answer to this but it would be good if someone who has experience of all three could draw up a side-by-side table giving the features and potential drawbacks of each. Without such information, many of us are just in the dark, clinging onto the one package we do know!

[JK]

...
I've no idea of the answer to this but it would be good if someone who has experience of all three could draw up a side-by-side table giving the features and potential drawbacks of each. Without such information, many of us are just in the dark, clinging onto the one package we do know!

At the risk of over-simplifying:

OCAD CS: is better integrated with the map and for instance I think the latest version can "guess" your control descriptions. Other things I think it does better is putting arbitrary text into your control descriptions. I haven't use it recently to compare features with the other tools. Owners do a lot of business with non-orienteering map makers and so maybe aren't as responsive to new features as you'd want. You have to pay per user rather than for a club which I consider a major issue.

CONDES: is what I use. I like it for fun events as it makes it easy to have butterflies, random order sections, things like that. You can measure shortest route between a pair of controls so you can maintain an accurate "running distance" for MTB-O, Ski-O and Sprint races. [It used to store a single "running route" per course rather than per leg which helped for course distance for Trail-O but the per leg messes that up ... bah humbug]. New features and changes seem to happen quickly. It might look expensive for a small club but isn't so bad for a larger one.

PP: is free. From what I can see from a quick play with the features it might be a bit "behind" in terms of what it can print and probably doesn't have all the things you'd want for MTB, Ski or Trail-O. For the price though it is hard to beat!

If you are a mapper then you'll pretty much need OCAD anyway. If your club has CONDES already then I recommend using it. If you don't have anything else then use PP.

Note that as a Controller there are OCAD and CONDES readers you can use for free, read-only, so being compatible with the Controller isn't an issue.

[Big Jon]

Condes9 can switch off any symbol in an OCAD file - so contour only or removing tracks - no problem. Not sure how this is done, but its another nail in OCAD course planning software.