ocad licence

[glenfeshie]

I asked OCAD how the re-activation is done and received the following reply:

'If you want to change OCAD from one computer to another you have to write us an eMaiL.'

With OCAD 9 it seems this applies even to the demo version.


I don't know why OCAD don't issue a club licence - it would be much more reasonable.

[Adventure Racer]

Interesting - I have a feeling they haven't properly considered the issues with moving the licence. Do they actually require you to prove you have removed the software when you e-mail them?

[swat]

I was sent a link to Purple Pen last night. This is a free piece of course setting software for OCAD maps. I'd never heard of it before but I downloaded it and found it does the job and is pretty simple to learn and use so could be worth a look for other clubs in our position.

[IanW]

Swat

Your link is wrong, it is http://purplepen.golde.org (i.e. no leading www)

But, thanks for the pointer -looks interesting

Ian

[seabird]

Unless i'm missing something, the problem with Purple Pen is that you can't use it without first having Ocad. If you're maps are already in Ocad 9, it therefore has no advantage.

[distracted]

I got the impression that as long as you have the OCAD map then you are fine. Which means that there would not be any worries about OCAD licences for planning use, as was the original point of discussion in this thread. Unless the planner also wants to make map corrections...

And from first try, it seems to work quite nicely - very clear to use and the documentation is good.

[GML]

What a brilliant piece of software! An almost perfect example of a piece of software that doesn't try to do too much, and in consequence is easy and simple to use. I've only played with it for an hour, but I am seriously considering using it for the next event that I am planning in January, in preference to OCAD8 (subject to controllers consent of course).

Congratulations to the developers!

[seabird]

I got the impression that as long as you have the OCAD map then you are fine.

Yes, using Purple Pen, I've managed to open a new event with ocad background map on a PC which does not have Ocad installed.

I have not been able to open the background map on that PC for an event that I've already started planning. i.e. to enable the essential communication required between planner and controller.

Any advice anyone?

[Paul Frost]

Seabird
I'm not sure what you mean about opening the background map.
I haven't tried Purple Pen yet as I have a full OCAD licence, but you don't need to "Open" a map to use it as a background.
What application were you using when you had "already started planning"?
Is the map an OCAD one?
What do you mean by

to enable the essential communication required between planner and controller

You can use the free OCAD 9 demo version for planning up to 5 courses & 50 controls/objects.

[Paul Frost]

I have installed PP and had a quick play around.
It seems quite easy to get started and a lot of thought has gone into it.
My problem, is that when I went to print it tells me that it may not print some OCAD symbols correctly and so courses should be exported to OCAD for printing. So you are back to where you started if you don't have a full OCAD licence.
The printing options seem very limited, no guide to show what will fit on an A4 sheet
I did manage to save the event file, close PP and then re-open it and the event without any problem.

The route that EckO is going is to update to the latest Condes (this is a club licence) and use that for all planning, and only the 2 people with a full OCAD licence do map updates etc.

Condes can use JPG or BMP files, but if you have an OCAD file all the better. I have always used Condes for larger events anyway as it is more powerful, and only encouraged OCAD 9 for local events and using the demo version.
I think that the Scottish 6 Day company have now specified that all planning for 2009 courses must be done using Condes 8.
Condes has now been around a long time and the new version looks like a complete re-write to take into account new features/requirements. It looks good as well, with a very clean interface.

PP looks interesting, but still in it's early stages.

[Ed]

My problem, is that when I went to print it tells me that it may not print some OCAD symbols correctly and so courses should be exported to OCAD for printing. So you are back to where you started if you don't have a full OCAD licence.
The printing options seem very limited, no guide to show what will fit on an A4 sheet

So plan the courses in PP, export as OCAD files, open them with the OCAD demo version and print them from there...

[Paul Frost]

If you had less than the 5 course / 50 control limit of the demo version you could have used OCAD demo all along.

I don't need to, as I have both OCAD and Condes.

[Ed]

If you had less than the 5 course / 50 control limit of the demo version you could have used OCAD demo all along.

yes, but if you want to plan a full event then you could do it in PP and then just use an OCAD demo version for printing.

Quite apart from which, it's possible (and even relatively easy) to circumvent the object limit in the OCAD demo version and create unlimited large maps using it (or at least, up until OCAD 8 it is, I've not yet tried version 9). Probably wouldn't work for the course-planning though as that uses a different system.

[distracted]

We have a new piece of free, open-source software which already trumps OCAD in terms of ease of use. No licence restrictions etc means that anyone in a club can use it. It's brand new - there are bound to be things that can be improved and added, including the printing options, but it would only need a few extra people to get involved and the development is likely to progress far faster than that of propriety software.

And for those clubs who only have one place/person that prints maps, or don't use OCAD 9, there's not going to be a problem with that particular current limitation of the software.

Give it a year or so and see where the software is then - I have a feeling that not many people will be using the OCAD course planning tools then...

[IanD]

there are bound to be things that can be improved and added, including the printing options, but it would only need a few extra people to get involved and the development is likely to progress far faster than that of propriety software.

Here's a suggested enhancement, which OCAD certainly doesn't support. It concerns the recording of climb on courses. Now I am resigned to working out the climb on each leg myself, no package is going to do that for me.

However, even though OCAD knows which legs are on in each course, it offers no way of recording the climb for each leg. Instead, I have to create my own spreadsheet, recording climb for each leg, duplicating the information about which legs are in which course, and then calculating the total for each course and manually transferring that into OCAD for the control descriptions.

What I want the course planning package to do is to allow me the option of entering the climb for each leg, and then the package should work out the total course climb for each course, and fill in that bit of the control descriptions. If asked to do this when not supplied with climb for each leg, it should invite me to input the climb for the missing legs one by one.

And finally, the really useful bit, if I move a control which starts or ends a leg for which I've previously input climb, it should offer me the option of deleting the climb records for the affected legs, leaving them alone, or re-inputting them.

Pie in the Sky, or something that a Purple Pen developer can take on?