First shown at InfoComm in June 2016, Stardraw Design 7.2 is the company’s most sophisticated design/documentation product yet. The software package won the S&VC Innovative Product 2016 award and was a finalist in the 2017 InAVate Technology Awards in the system design category.  Since its launch the program has been constantly updated, improved and enhanced to ensure that customers enjoy the best possible experience in using SD7.2.  Here are some of the key updates since its launch at Infocomm 2016:

First of the headline features is PDF Import now with improved support for AutoCAD-generated PDFs, support for Unicode symbols (e.g. Chinese characters), improved support of diverse image formats, enforcement of correct grid size and support for hatches. The PDF import feature enables you to import a PDF file which creates a new project with a drawing tab for each page in the PDF. Better still, vector PDFs are converted into faithful, editable vector drawings in Stardraw Design 7.2, meaning that you can edit the text as well as other objects, like lines, rectangles, arcs etc, as if they were native SD7 drawings.

“This is a great feature that has seen significant improvements since it was first launched six months ago,” said Stardraw CEO, Rob Robinson. “The use of PDFs over DWG/DXf file formats is becoming more and more frequent and poses a significant challenge for integrators because they cannot be edited. Our powerful and improved PDF Import feature solves the issue and is unique in the market; no other AV system design tool enables you to import a PDF and convert it into an editable, resolution-independent vector drawing.”

Other important enhancements are the addition of support for externally-referenced files (XREFs) when importing from DWG files, and the addition of support for RackTools files. RackTools 3.5 is the Middle Atlantic Products rack design software developed by Stardraw.com. SD7.2 can now be used to edit RackTools (.S05) files.

Improvements have also been made Library Synchronization process. Already 8 times faster than in SD7.1, synchronization has been improved to eliminate “hangs” when there has been a synch error. When an error is detected for any particular manufacturer library, that library will be re-synchronized in its entirety.

Speaking of the symbols library, growth is regular and constant with almost 100,000 symbols from over 800 manufacturers; the Stardraw.com symbols library is doubtless the most comprehensive resource of its type in the world. Usage figures of SD7.2 also continue to soar with monthly sign-ins showing a massive 70% increase since 2015 where figures were showing around 10,000 sessions per month. Today those figures are running at an average of 17,000 monthly sign-ins.

“We are very proud of the constant progress of SD7.2,” said Robinson. “The fact that user figures are improving month on month and year on year is testament to the fact that the software is doing its job, and we are doing ours in ensuring that it is always the very best that it can be.”

For further information, please see http://www.stardraw.com/products/StardrawDesign7