Graeme Mears and his "Super Cub," pictured here with co-winner of Team Scale honors, Dave Patrick

Remember the DesignCAD Contest winner from the December '02/January '03 contest? Graeme Mears won a copy of DesignCAD 3D MAX Plus when he submitted pictures and ModelCAD designs of a project he was working on at the time:  a 33% exact-scale model of a "Super Cub" airplane. When Mears submitted his entry into the contest he mentioned that he hoped the plane would be ready for the International Invitational Top Gun Competition. Well--it was ready, and we aren't the only ones impressed by his work and attention to detail.

Mears' "Super Cub" won the "Critics Award," "Pilots Choice," and "Highest Static" honors at the Top Gun competition. Count those six trophies in the pictures above! Congratulations Mr. Mears and Mr. Patrick!

We're delighted knowing that Mr. Mears selected ModelCAD to be an integral part of the process.

Here's what Mr. Mears wrote us when submitting his designs and pictures for the December/January Design Contest ...

Mr. Mears has been working with ModelCAD since May 2001.

He says ... "I had no experience with any CAD program before this. I found ModelCad 3000 very easy to learn and by now, 18 months later, am very fast with it.  I use it for drafting anything that needs a drawing.

I am a competitor, and winner several times at the prestigious RC 'TOP GUN' competition held annually in Florida. I  bought ModelCad 3000 to design a new model for this competition.  I build my scale aircraft exactly like a full size is built, tubing and metal with some composite parts.  There are some 9 sheets of plans, most of them are about 3 feet by 8 feet.

The Model is not quite finished. It is currently being fabric covered and painted.  It is to be hoped that it will be ready for the Top Gun competition in April. Everything is being constructed in my workshop from scratch."

DesignCAD Productivity Tips

Some Problems and Their Most-Common Remedies

Answer: The easiest way to print a single  layer of a drawing is to select the layer using the SELECT LAYER button in the LAYER Options folder of the OPTIONS dialog box. Then Print the drawing as you would normally, but enable the PRINT SELECTION ONLY option in the Print dialog box.

If you are experiencing "jerky" cursor movement, look at the Snap Grid command on the Options menu. It's more than likely that the Snap Grid is turned on and that the visible part of the drawing is only slightly larger than the current Snap Grid Size. If there is a checkmark next to the command, select the SNAP GRID command to turn off the Snap Grid.

If you are having trouble opening an existing drawing, try enabling the IGNORE DRAWING VIEW DATA option in the Open dialog box when you open it. (This option is available in DesignCAD 3000 and newer versions.)

Answer: Tif files and bitmaps are raster-based files, meaning that they have no vector or line information, only blocks or dots of color. DesignCAD works with vector-based files. If you want to edit a raster-based file, use the Load Image command to open the graphic in DesignCAD. Once the image is loaded, use the Auto Trace Bitmap command or trace the image manually using drawing tools such as line, curve, arc, etc. Then edit the traced drawing.

If your cursor is disappearing in the drawing area, check your cursor color under Color Options. More than one user has changed the Background color for DesignCAD to black and neglected to change the 2D Cursor color to something other than the default (which is black).