ReleaseNotes:Feature Review December 2015

This summary covers Planimate enhancements in 2015, over versions 7.19.1 to 8.39.0.

Modelling & Editing

Routine operation renames - PasteFromClipboard is now ImportFromClipboard AutoSave now triggers on a windows shutdown New "scaled kilo" data display formats.

User Interface

Copy/paste handling in tables has been rewritten to work more transparently for end users with a new mechanism enabling modellers to process paste errors. Modellers can select to enable column filters in table editors, very useful when setting up complex data tables. Views can be deleted during run which is useful for models that build parts of themselves from templates.

Track/Rail Modelling

Train length can now be displayed wither as a continous "noodle" or a series of linked rectangles representing the individual train cars. Options have been added to optimise performance of models that provide their own train controller logic. An item's route can be assigned from a column in a table.

Graphics & Animation

Graphic drawing is largely rewritten and highly optimised enabling faster flicker free updates. Table/Graph Views can be selected to draw in the "animation layer" which enables high speed continuous redraw of changing data (very useful for data replay). Popup panels can be completely transparent using colour keying. Rotated text in paint objects is better supported. Log Driven Graph mode "point quadrilateral" enables drawing of arbitrary 4 sided shapes. A model has been developed using this to display 3D objects with simple lighting, perspective and hidden surface elimination. Routine operations ScaleColor(), SetTransparency() and BlendColors() make it easier to process RGB colours with transparency. This was used in the 3D object demo. Cell colours can be set to any RGB colour using SetCellColor().

Planimate DLL Call API

Calls to DLLs from routine code are now shown and edited using a straiughtforward notation. DLLs can be called anywhere there is a data reference, not just a single operation per routine line. New callbacks enable more table reallocation and access/setting of many Planimate table column properties.

Features Changed, Removed & Deprecated

Object index allocation optimised with an option for it to behave as previous versions did. To improve

Performance & Speed

Graphics, simulator, object management, label list handling and future event processing were extensively optimised to enable Planimate to handle tens of thousands of objects and tens of thousands of items undergoing delay with performance degrading gracefully as model complexity increased. New features for testing and performance profiling.