A Letter From the President - Christian Holbrook

January 6, 2010

Greetings to all of you out there in WireCAD user-land! Welcome to a new decade! First, let me take a moment of your time and say thanks. We, here at the WireCAD ranch, would like to thank you for your support. We are a small organization dedicated to making tools that make your life easier. We love to hear from our users. We know that times are hard right now. Everybody is feeling the pinch. We at WireCAD are offering our own stimulus package comprised of two parts. First, we are not raising our prices. WireCAD v6 will cost the same as WireCAD v5. Second, we have created a free version of WireCAD v6. We call it XL FREE and it is truly free! That is no cost. Zip, nada, nil. It is, however, hampered and will not run plug-ins. It will provide an easy means by which people in your workflow can view drawings, databases and reports without having to purchase a full copy. We have added additional incentives to the Assurance program like discounts on training and some cool free plug-ins.

We have been working hard to get this release done by January 1st 2010 for the start of a new decade but have, thus far, missed the mark. We are now targeting February 1st. The beta version is available from the bug tracking site and to date does not require a key, though that will change on/or around January 15th.

As many of you know we have been working for the last two years to bring you WireCAD version 6. This has been a monumental task as it is a complete rewrite of the software from the ground up. We have taken this opportunity to make WireCAD as open as possible. WireCAD v6 includes a plug-in framework and software development kit (SDK) that allow you to customize the application to suit your needs. We have also made the application work with other languages and locales. We have provided a plug-in that allows users to translate WireCAD messages into the language of their choice.

WireCAD v6 has too many improvements to list all of them here but let me touch on the highlights.

We are now database agnostic*. We will be shipping v6 with both SQL Server databases, and VISTA DB (file based) databases. Later in the year we will add support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. We will not be including support for MS Access, since we believe that Microsoft will discontinue support for that product line in the near future.

WireCAD v6 has all of the same automated drawing tools and reporting capabilities of v5. In addition we have added a ton of new features that will make your life even easier. We now have hierarchical data structures in the project databases that relate cables to systems, cables to drawings, systems to drawings, etc. This allows us to bring you drill-down reports. WireCAD v6 also has multi-relational cable structures. This provides a means by which you can interconnect one output to multiple inputs or vice versa. You determine whether the cable is represented by a single database entry or many. As you may know, WireCAD has had the ability to customize the cable number format. We have now included that same ability for the SysName. You are not locked into a "TYPE-##" format but, rather, can make use of any of the included variables to create a custom format.

Enough of the sales pitch. Now let tell you about some of the changes that we have made that you may or may not be so happy about. We are no longer supporting MS Access databases. As mentioned earlier, Microsoft continues to dial back support for Access and has made SQL Server a lot easier to get into (read free but not zero admin), though it will never be as easy as Access. We have changed the reporting engine to be much friendlier but we do not have a conversion utility to bring any of your custom reports forward. Sorry. We have not yet rewritten PatchVerx to plug in to v6, though it is on our roadmap.

We have changed the way the software registration process enforces the license agreement by adding floating licenses. In previous versions you have had the ability to activate WireCAD on two machines concurrently for a single user. With v6 you will be able to install WireCAD on any number of machines concurrently though only one machine (or your license count if you purchase multiple licenses) will be able to operate concurrently. Note: if you currently hold multiple licenses you will have the choice of being issued multiple single-seat keys or a single multiple-seat key.

WireCAD v5 and v6 can live on the same machine. In order to make use of your v5 projects you will need to convert them to v6. The conversion process does not touch the drawings in any way. It simply converts the old MS Access database into a new SQL Server or VistaDB database and adds some additional housekeeping files to the folder. The project, once converted, can still be viewed in v5, though any database adds\edits\deletions would not be visible since they would be made in the v6 database.

I and the team here at the WireCAD ranch thank you again for your support and kind words over the years. We look forward to seeing you at the trade shows this year. Come by and say hi.

Christian Holbrook
President

*Not all features are available at all product levels. SQL Server databases require administration, care and feeding and keep a whole industry of database administrators employed. Holbrook Enterprises, Inc. cannot provide database support for server based databases.

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