Ralph Grabowski

Actrix Technical 2000 is the third release, following the original Actrix Technical and Actrix Business releases. To review the new release, I decided to go through the "What's New in Actrix 2000?" section of the on-line help.

In the review below, I provide the text from Autodesk, then discuss my findings. I make some comments on features available in other programs, particularly the prime competitor Visio 2000.

While working with Actrix, I found a bug (or maybe it’s a feature). I switch between Actrix and my word processor using Alt-Tab. Each time I switch back to Actrix, a different object is selected (shows green handles).

Multi-page document support: An unlimited number of pages per drawing file are now supported, allowing you to maintain multiple related layouts or diagrams within the same document. The Pages toolbar provides easy access to most page operations, or use the menu commands. Hyperlinks may refer to specific Actrix pages, either within the same or different drawings.

I quickly created a document with 101 pages, so I don’t know if a document can actually have an infinite number of page. You cannot create a new document with a specified number of pages; each page has to be created individually. I confirmed that each page could have independent properties, such as landscape-portrait, size of page, etc. One feature I found missing is page tabs, such as those found in AutoCAD 2000, Microsoft Excel, and Visio 2000; instead, I had to use the new Pages toolbar.

ActiveSockets: New, innovative ActiveSockets allow ActiveShapes and connectors to plug into each other at any dynamically defined point, rather than just at pre-defined locations. For example, a connector shape may be connected anywhere on a flowchart shape rather than just on pre-defined socket locations. If the connector is unplugged from the flowchart shape, the ActiveSocket is removed automatically. Many of the Actrix connectors and other ActiveShapes have been enhanced to create ActiveSockets automatically providing more drawing flexibility and automation.

The ActiveSockets work on ActiveShapes. Items on the Draw toolbar (line, polyline, arc, spline, rectangle, circle, and ellipse) don’t seem to have ActiveSockets. I could be wrong, but Actrix seems to lack the object snap found in AutoCAD and Visio, which would allow me to snap to geometrically significant locations, such as the midpoint of a line and the quadrant point of a circle.

Performance improvements: Performance has been improved in several areas of Actrix, including opening files and opening ActiveShapes catalogs.

I find that Actrix continues to display shapes in its catalogs slower than Visio: 1.5 secs versus instant. On the other hand, Visio itself feels more sluggish when loading, than does Actrix. It is very difficult to compare the speed of loading drawings, but that didn’t sop me from trying: Actrix opened one of its 300KB sample drawings in 5 seconds, while Visio opened one its 300KB sample drawings in 3 seconds.

Drop shadows: Drop shadows have been added as a formatting property to enable you to add more visual impact to your drawings. Drop shadows can be added quickly from an icon on the Format toolbar. The color and offset of the shadow can be adjusted from the Property Window.

The drop shadow can be any uniform color; each shape can have an individual shadow offset distance. Visio allows graduated fills for drop shadows, but all shapes on a page are restricted to the same offset distance.

Text enhancements: Text is a key component of most diagrams. Enhancements in this area include text editor improvements, tab defaults and a tab setting dialog, and the ability to have text size scale with drawing scale. Finally, you may now navigate between mulitple [sic] text objects in an ActiveShape using the F2 key.

I am not sure what is meant by "text editor improvements" since there doesn’t seem to be a text editor; text is edited in place, if part of an ActiveShape via a single line editor in the Properties window. Text in a group cannot be edited.

Help/Learning improvements: A number of improvements have been made to the documentation, online help, and learning tools included with Actrix to help you get results quickly. These improvements include support for HTML-based help and context-sensitive help in the VBA object browser.

I am no fan of Microsoft’s HTML-based help (aka CHM, short for compiled hyper markup), which I consider slower and less user-friendly than the traditional Windows Help format. For example, the CHM help lacks user-selectable font size, and lacks the ability to toggle whether the help window should always be on top. The context-sensitive help in VBA is half-implemented: pressing F1 doesn’t work, but clicking the help icon does.

Scaling improvements: Several enhancements to object scaling have been made to Actrix in order to support typical user operations. In general, the size of shapes will now scale (not just their locations) when using the Scale tool. In addition, scaling adjustments made to the objects within a group are maintained if the group is ungrouped. Also, shapes will be scaled automatically upon initial placement if their size is much greater than the page.

The Scale tool displays a yellow dot, which indicates the point from which scaling takes place. I could not get text in a group to scale with the group. Scaling shapes to fit the page is a wonderful feature.

Zoom enhancements: Several enhancements have been made to display manipulation in Actrix so that you can navigate your drawings more easily. Zoom Previous, Zoom Forward, and Fit All tools have been added and are accessible from the Standard toolbar or View menu. The zoom limits have also been expanded.

Zoom Previous and Fit All are crucial commands for reducing frustration in trying to view the drawing. The zoom percentage ranges from 1% to 20,000%.

Additional arrowhead types: New arrowhead types have been added for creating UML diagrams.

All arrowheads types are available from the toolbar, unlike Visio, which has just a few common linetypes listed in the standard toolbar. On the other hand, it does not appear that Actrix allows me to create custom arrowheads, as does Visio.

Office 2000 style menu bars and UI refinement: Menu bars now conform to the Microsoft Office 2000 style. In addition, the Toolbars dialog may be displayed by right-clicking on any toolbar. The menus and toolbars have also been reorganized to improve user productivity by making commonly used tools more readily available.

To me, the menu bars do not look like those in Microsoft Office 2000 -- more like Office 97, in my opinion. Right-clicking any toolbar displays the Toolbars dialog box, which let me select which toolbars to display, and to customize toolbars. To see the drawing tools, I click the Show/Hide Drawing Toolbar, which opens a separate toolbar. I prefer that to Visio’s use of flyouts.

Flip tools: Flip vertical and flip horizontal tools have been added and are accessible from the Standard toolbar, providing a simple alternative to the Mirror tool for these common operations.

I can vouch for the veracity of the statement.

Arrow controls: Drop-down graphical controls for specifying the start and end arrowhead types for lines have been added to the Format toolbar, providing ready access to these commonly used formatting options.

Actrix’s toolbar has two drop-down lists of arrowheads, one for each end of the object. I prefer this over Visio’s use of a single drop-down list.

Size and position dialog: A dialog for modifying the size, position, and rotation of ActiveShapes has been added and is accessible from the Modify menu and toolbar.

The Modify>Size & Position item is grayed-out (unavailable) when non-ActiveShape object is selected, such as a line or a group of drawn objects. The dialog box is modal, meaning I cannot leave it open all the time, as in Visio 2000. Actrix’s Properties window is non-modal, but it does not display the angle of an object.

Toggle-able display of Property Window and Content Explorer: The Content Explorer and Property window may now be toggled on and off from the keyboard (F8 and F9, respectively), menu, or toolbar.

This is similar to AutoCAD 2000 and AutoCAD LT, but disappointingly uses different shortcut keys: Ctrl-1 to toggle Properties, and Ctrl-2 to toggle DesignCenter (equivalent to Content Explorer).

Ralph Grabowski