Change Log Release 2025

This log lists all relevant changes in the individual releases of CAD6industrie, CAD6studio, CAD6starter, and CAD6engine. Some of those do not apply to all editions.

Release 2025.2.11.25 (November 25, 2025)

•	File selection in Recently Created Backups did not work correctly, often resulting in the first or last entry in the list being used.

•	When importing DXF, DWG, and PDF files, horizontally scaled text was incorrectly assigned the fill mode "Filling & Outline" instead of "Filling".

•	The command Edit 3D Parts > Split into Separate Parts did not work correctly in some cases with operators containing complex subsets.

Release 2025.2.11.4 (November 4, 2025)

•	The new command Identify Layer Contents allows quick selection of all objects assigned to specific layers. Also available in the Parameter Window.

•	In the Selection Filter (0), it is now possible to filter by additional text properties such as compression and line distance.

•	When importing SVG files with several tightly packed style classes, only the first class was handled correctly.

•	When creating EMF or WMF files from data containing block instances, the overall bounding frame could be calculated too small.

•	The "File Selection" dialog did not work correctly when selecting a path; the path was not terminated with a '\'.

Release 2025.2.10.14 (October 14, 2025)

•	You can now import PDF files. Choose either specific pages or the entire document. Layers, if present, are preserved.

•	In list-based pen and layer dialogs, you can now filter the list by (partial) texts, by modes, and by flags.

•	In the "Object Manager" Dialog, subtrees can now be collapsed and expanded. Working with very large object sets (over 100,000) has been accelerated.

•	The number of predefined process colors has been increased by around 1,000. The display of CMYK color values for standard colors has been improved (no unnecessary decimal places).

•	Inserting separators to the Command Bar didn't work. New buttons were initially invisible. Some buttons incorrectly displayed check marks.

•	When generating parts lists, comments in groups can now also be referenced as "block name" or "block comment".

•	The maximum number of referenced drawings has been increased from 50 to 200. In addition, exceeding this limit is now handled correctly.

•	When resolving certain fonts (e.g., the original "Helvetica" by Agfa) into outlines, redundant sub-shapes appeared that consisted of only a single point.

•	When searching for text or properties within drawings in layout mode, the view now automatically switches to the page containing the found object.

•	When using DirectPDF with layer output, the layer assignment of objects in drawing references and extended objects is now adjusted so that the behavior when showing and hiding the layers is more similar to the behavior in CAD6.

•	When exporting surfaces and curves with multiple contours to DXF and DWG, the point count of individual contours was reported too high, which could cause issues when importing into other systems.

Release 2025.1.7.8 (July 8, 2025)

•	In the dialogs for selecting multiple layers or pens (for example for layer visibility or for the selection filter), the status is now also displayed for entire folders.

•	When using DirectPDF, some unused layers were output. Additionally, the layers were displayed in an arbitrary order.

Release 2025.1.7.1 (July 1, 2025)

•	Easily include the power of CAD6 and DirectPDF into your own Windows applications by means of the new CAD6engine (separately available in two editions).

•	When using Block > Edit, the Object Manager can now be called directly for each block to edit the individual objects it contains.

•	The new command Scale Objects > Fit In replaces the previous commands "Fit In Proportional" and "Fit In Non-Proportional". It offers even more scaling options.

•	The buttons for switching the snap modes in the Panel and Parameter Window are now configurable; there is no longer a combination button for four snap modes.

•	Two additional icons are available for displaying comments. They can now also be used without a progress symbol.

•	Some switches in the "Check Objects Parameters" Dialog were assigned to settings other than those displayed.

•	Scaling of line pattern lengths in block line patterns did not work correctly for simple lines, other than for curves and surfaces.

•	The installation data now include all the required Microsoft run-time libraries. They no longer need to be installed manually under any circumstances.

Release 2025.0.4.15 (April 15, 2025)

•	When outputting to PDF (using DirectPDF or CAD6PDF), bitmaps with an alpha channel are now checked to see if the alpha channel is actually being used. Only if it isn't, the much better compressing JPG format can be used. This can sometimes make the resulting PDF files dramatically smaller.

•	If many objects were moved together on the screen while switching between different programs at the same time, the program could crash in rare cases.

•	The display of simple lines with a block line pattern within a mapping differed from the subsequent printout (which was correct).

•	When opening drawings with block hatches in objects that were hidden at the time (e.g. objects in model space when a page was initially displayed), their recalculation failed and an error message appeared.

•	Immediately after saving a drawing, groups could sometimes have an invalid bounding box and therefore no longer be visible or clickable. After reloading the drawing, everything worked again.

•	When fitting bitmap references into rectangles (Import from > Bitmap File (.), Fit in Rectangle and Import from > Bitmap via URL, Fit in Rectangle), a wrong corner point could be used as placement point.

•	When using the Area Mode »Jutting Into«, markings, comments, and hyperlinks could not be selected. The same applied to unresolved references to blocks, bitmaps, or drawing references.

•	If many objects were moved together on the screen while snapping of intersection points with snap preview was active, artifacts could temporarily become visible on the screen.

•	A color-filled or contoured output area was missing from the PDF output. When generating the preview upon saving, that area's opacity was always set to 100%.

•	The preview for hatching types could take a very long time for block hatches with a scaling factor significantly less than 1.

Release 2025.0.4.2 (April 2, 2025)

•	When opening drawings containing embedded bitmaps, it could happen that some of them were loaded from the file but then deleted from memory. They were therefore no longer saved the next time the file was saved and were lost.

•	When resolving using Trim Objects > Resolve Completely, all properties of the newly created sub-objects were accidentally fixed, meaning that changes to the pen and layer no longer had a direct effect.

•	When using DirectPDF with layers, some layers were output that did not contain any objects. Additionally, the layers are now displayed alphabetically.

•	The option "Also export objects in non-printed layers" (for DirectPDF and CAD6PDF) did not work correctly for drawings in layout mode with mappings.

•	If DirectPDF was used with the "One job per sheet" option and multiple bitmaps on different pages, those bitmaps could be mixed up or missing.

•	Underlining and strikeout are now supported when outputting outlined or resolved text. Accordingly, the corresponding warnings no longer appear.

•	Aligning objects horizontally or vertically (for example, Align Objects > Horizontal, Middle) now also works in rotated and perspective views.

•	When scaling tables as a whole, text sizes and margins were not adjusted correctly. The height and width of empty cells were accidentally always calculated using a default font size of 5 mm. Highlighting the selected cell / column / row while editing did not work correctly.

•	When scaling extended labels (such as Surface Finish ISO 1302) as a whole, the text size was not adjusted correctly.

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If properties of objects within external blocks were changed directly, the dialog sometimes incorrectly offered elements such as pen and layer from the drawing instead of from the respective library. If a pen or layer was selected from the library, this assignment often only worked after reinitializing the library, for example, by saving and reopening.

•	When editing buttons in the Block Window, the most recent change is now saved and used as a default for new buttons.

•	When printing using "All Objects", some objects in groups or blocks were used to calculate the surrounding frame, even though they were not output at all.

Release 2025.0.3.18 (March 18, 2025)

•	When creating PDF files with DirectPDF, you can now choose between two levels of accuracy to create either particularly accurate or particularly small files (sometimes only half as big). The computing time for the output has been reduced by up to 1/3.

•	Moving buttons in the Command Bar sometimes didn't work as expected. The context editing menu has also been improved.

•	The display of guide lines for Notch Edge > Placeable and Notch Edge > Distance, Numerical was not always working. When entering the distance, an arrow now indicates the direction in which positive distances are measured.

Release 2025.0.3.11 (March 11, 2025)

•	Dashed line patterns were sometimes displayed as solid lines if an object with a degenerate (e.g. extremely short) line pattern was displayed before it in the display order.

•	If a scaling factor was specified for the model space in a drawing in classic mode, this factor was inadvertently applied to the PDF output.

•	When inserting bitmaps (from files or the clipboard), the set "Alignment when Placing" was not correctly respected.

•	The installation failed with an error on Windows 8.1 (64-bit). The current CAD6 can now run there, but has only been tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11. We recommend using Windows 11!

Release 2025.0.3.4 (March 4, 2025)

•	Starting with this release, only 64-bit versions of CAD6 are available. All outdated 32-bit parts and corresponding limitations have been removed.

•	A complete overhaul of memory management has reduced the initial memory requirement per drawing window to less than half. Depending on the number of open libraries and fonts, this means up to 400 MiB less memory is used – per drawing!

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CAD6industrie and CAD6studio now include the new, completely in-house developed DirectPDF at no extra cost. Use it to directly create high-resolution PDF files with Unicode texts, all colors models (RGB/HSB, CMYK, gray, CIELab), transparencies, and hyperlinks, as well as, if desired, layers and embedded color space profiles. The output resolution is 0.00000035 mm, which is more accurate by a factor of about 30,000 compared to using a standard PDF printer driver (better than CAD6PDF by a factor of 10). PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2b files can be created.

•	Owners of a CAD6PDF license can continue to use that with all its features for the foreseeable future. However, we recommend switching to DirectPDF soon. New CAD6PDF licenses are no longer available.

•	The context menu now also contains commands for aligning text, creating and using links between text and objects, and editing commands for dimensions.

•	In all dialogs that feature a font selection, you can call the new "Font List" dialog which allows a graphical selection of the font and the search for partial texts in the font's name.

•	Bitmap references can now also be fitted into rectangles (Import from > Bitmap File (.), Fit in Rectangle and Import from > Bitmap via URL, Fit in Rectangle). This makes them independent of the specified resolution and automatically adjusts when the bitmap size changes.

•	Even without fitting, the alignment of the bitmap can be determined relative to the insertion point (see the "Bitmap Import Options" dialog).

•	The insertion point of bitmap references can now be selected and moved in the same way as other definition points and the insertion point of block instances (e.g. using Move Set of Points > Offset).

•	The Automatic Trim / Cutout and Automatic Lengthen trimming commands now work much faster in complex situations. In addition, buttons in the parameter window can be used to set whether hatching and/or text should be taken into account.

•	The former "Dynamic Snapping Guide" has been renamed Temporary Objects, as these objects can now be used for many purposes other than snapping. The commands Circle > In Rectangle and Circle > Incircle have been added.

•	The maximum number of buttons in the Block Window has been increased from 200 to 500. The arrangement of the buttons now remains the same even if the window height is changed. Command buttons can now be moved in all four directions in the block window, the Tool Window and the Panel.

•	New command "Show Overview of Only These Items" in the "Layers" dialog and "Pens" dialog for selected items. Elements in folders are indented without annoying repetition of the folder name.

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Pen and layer "*Standard" no longer exist in this form; they have been replaced by "- Not assigned to any Layer -" and "- Not assigned to any Pen -" respectively. Functionally, this makes no difference. The former line pattern "*Standard" has been renamed "- Solid Line -". All other "*Standard" have been renamed to "- Standard -" to be more recognizable.

•	If a warning was issued during bitmap export (e.g. "Text outlined and underlined"), the output was sometimes aborted without further notification.

•	If the search criteria are changed during the search when searching for texts, properties, or in databases, the search is now correctly restarted and the number of hits is updated.

•	When changing the properties of texts that use a currently unavailable system font (such as DINDRAFT), nonsensical options were displayed. After the changes, the texts were partially marked as underlined or crossed out.

•	The export of 3D data using CAD6PDF was not available (grayed out in the dialog by mistake). The output of header and/or footer texts caused the output to be aborted.

•	mkzip.exe and mkunzip.exe are no longer included as they used outdated 32-bit libraries. Instead, the free 64-bit software 7-Zip is now used for all compression purposes.

•	Starting with release 2025, compressed drawing files will be saved in 7-Zip format instead of ZIP format. This makes them about 1/4 smaller and reduces computing time.

•	All installation files are now compressed with 7-Zip format instead of ZIP, making them about 5% smaller. Unpacking is considerately faster.