Changes Since Release 4.00

Home: What's New: Changes Since Release 4.00

Several new features have been added to Sketchpad Version 4 since its initial release. The most important new features are described below. Each time you update to the latest version of Sketchpad, look at this page to see what new features are available.

A more detailed list of changes from one version of Sketchpad to another, including minor improvements and bug fixes, is available on the Web at http://www.keypress.com/sketchpad/produpdates.html.

New in 4.06 (March 2004)

When this release is installed on a computer on which Sketchpad has not been used previously, anti-aliased graphics are enabled by default. (There is no change to the existing anti-aliasing setting when an older Sketchpad is updated to 4.06.) Anti-aliased graphics improve the appearance of Sketchpad objects, at the expense of slower operation of the program. Use the System panel of Advanced Preferences to view or change this setting.
Sketchpad now supports Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).

New in 4.04 (March 2003)

You can now relabel an entire group of objects at once. See the new Label command for details.

Under Mac OS X and most Windows operating systems, you can display sketches with high-quality anti-aliased graphics. See System Preferences for details.
You can align a group of text objects (captions, measurements, parameters, calculations, functions and action buttons) so their left edges are aligned and their vertical spacing is even. See Aligning Text Objects for details.
You can use the Shift key to change the Save As command to Save As HTML. See the Save As command for details.
There are several new and revised sample documents.
(Windows) You can use a command line to specify a folder for Sketchpad to use when you first open or save a sketch. See Tips for Experts for details.

New in 4.03 (August 2002)

You can now resize a caption to reflow the text it contains. See Working with Captions for details.
(Mac) Sketchpad now runs natively under Mac OS X, and supports the Aqua user interface. The installer installs either the Classic or the OS X version of Sketchpad as appropriate.
(Mac) The Mac OS X application looks for tools in two different Tool Folders, first in the same directory as the Sketchpad application itself, and second in the user's Documents folder. This allows users without write access to the folder containing Sketchpad to save custom tools in their own Tool Folder, inside their Documents folder. See Alternate Tool Folders for details.
(Windows) You can now save a sketch in graphics format, as an Enhanced Metafile (.emf) or as a Windows Metafile (.wmf) See Metafile Export for details.

New in 4.02 (May 2002)

You can now plot the data in a table, and copy the data to use it in other programs. See Tables for details.

New in 4.01 (January 2002)

(Windows) You can now use a command line to specify an absolute path (not just a relative path) to an alternate tool folder. See Alternate Tool Folders and Command-Line Flags for details.
(Windows) The Tool Folder now supports shortcuts: The Tool Folder itself can be a shortcut, and it can contain shortcuts to sketches.

New in 4.00 (November 2001)

Several features of Sketchpad were completed after the Reference Manual went to press, and are not described in the very first printing of that manual. These include tables (used to collect the values of measurements) and certain advanced operations with text.

Tables

You can accumulate measurements you've made in a sketch into a table. Create a table by selecting one or more measurements and choosing Tabulate from the Graph menu. You can collect measurements in a table manually or automatically as the measurement changes. Tables of changing values are also created for you automatically when you create an iteration in which one or more values change.

See also
Tables
Tabulate
Iterate

Advanced Text Operations

The Merge Text command lets you merge several objects containing text (labeled objects, measurements, or captions) into a single composite caption, as described in the printed manual. Recent additions for advanced users allow you to attach a measurement or caption to a point, so that its position is determined by a geometric construction; and to create merged captions with special mathematical formatting (such as fractions, overbars, and so forth).