HighDesign
What's New in HighDesign
Future-ready.
HighDesign R7. Enjoy Your Independence.
The seventh major release, HighDesign R7 is the perfect CAD & architectural design solution for the new, fast Macs with the new M-series chips and for Windows computers.
What's New in HighDesign R7.1
Boolean Operations
Combine two polygons together with one click: select the polygons and choose one of the available formulas from Union, Subtract, Intersection and Exclusion.
With these new tools, you can join together hatches, polylines, rectangles and polygons for even greater freedom and efficiency.
Home Window
This window is the new central hub for creating new documents, browsing and loading recent projects, loading templates, and more.
What's more, the Home window provides access to the recovered files that are found in the recovery folder and the What's New page.
Export as Image
This new window includes all the options and settings to export the project as an image file in one of the many supported formats.
The current view can be exported to one of the available file formats, such as the common Jpeg, PNG and Tiff, plus the newly supported TGA, HDR and WebP, with direct access to their compression options.
In addition to the file format options, this window also lets you define the size and resolution of the image (where supported), the background and the color filter.
Improved and Faster DXF/DWG Support
Importing DXF/DWG files is now up to three times faster than before, more accurate and efficient. Texts and dimensions, layouts and viewports are now imported with greater accuracy. The original file settings are preserved as much as possible so as to allow a seamless integration with DWG-based products.
A new progress window shows the current import operation and allows the user to cancel it at any time.
Dozens of Enhancements and Quality Improvements
Overall, HighDesign R7.1 includes more than 30 new features and improvements. A great deal of attention was devoted to the areas of drafting and user experience.
In Application Settings, it is now possible to define the default behavior and units of the Nudge command: you can now use any value in any of the supported units as the minimum nudging quantity for precise and controlled edits.
Snapping now features improved accuracy and flexibility, with a clearer distinction between the various snap and alignment points.
Performance and stability were also increased for a better overall experience.
What's new in HighDesign R7. Work Smarter. Draw Faster.
Support for the latest macOS Ventura and Windows 11
HighDesign R7 has been developed on and fully supports the new macOS 13 Ventura and the latest Windows 11.
Trace References
A complete tool to display, review and trace drawings and pictures on a drafting sheet.
Tracing references are used to place a view of another drawing on a sheet with different coordinates, scale, clipping and rotation without altering the original drawing. With adjustable opacity and rendering filters, trace references can also be resized by a known measure to set to scale any imported drawing or image.
Use the Trace Reference to compare drawings, create elevations and cross sections from floor plans, or to set to scale and trace a scanned floor plan or city map.
Smoother Curves
You can now change the node types of paths and polylines. With the new options you can quickly change the node type from straight to curved.
Bezier paths support straight, mirrored, asymmetric and disconnected nodes; Polylines support straight, convex and concave arcs.
The enhanced Join command is now capable of combining two paths, splines or poly-lines into one object.
Smarter Hatches
The Hatch at Click tool has been redesigned and is now faster and more efficient. You can insert a hatch on shapes made of lines, poly-lines, polygons, arcs, circles, curves and walls, all with a single click.
The same method can now also open islands inside any selected hatch: opening holes in components, or doors and windows on elevations has never been easier.
More Customizable Pages
Page sizes can now be entered in any base units: inches, millimeters and pixels.
New size presets in the Present Drawing tool include the common formats of social posts.
Project Views included in HighDesign SE
In addition to drafting sheets, HighDesign SE now includes project views.
Project views store a screenshot of the current drawing with the visible layers and sheets that can be activated with a click and selected for print.
What's new in HighDesign R6.5. User experience. Documentation. Productivity.
At home on Windows 11
Developed and optimized for Windows 11, HighDesign R6.5 is the best release for Windows.
The user interface, including colors, icons and buttons, has been updated to match the great new look of Windows.
Drawing, zooming, panning, graphic functions and redraws have been optmized specifically for Windows 11.
Improved user experience
Most windows and dialogs have been updated and in some cases redesigned to provide a better user experience by reducing the clutter, showing more information and descriptions and making the whole workflow smoother.
Multi-language Documentation
The Quick Start guide and the user manual have been completely updated, enriched with more chapters and more detailed descriptions. What's more, the product documentation is now available in four languages: English, Italian, German and French.
Enhanced Resource Manager
Project resources can now be modified directly and changes do not affect other projects because items that are added to the project via the Resource Manager are now distinct from the originals in the HighDesign or User libraries, which now act as templates.
The Resource Manager has been updated to unify the different managers. In HighDesign LT it is now possible to create project resources.
Redesigned Group Editor
Redesigned and enhanced the Edit Group workspace: grouped items are now shown in their context and sub-groups can be edited more easily.
The new Add/Remove Object buttons allow to easily add existing objects or remove them from the current group.
Point styles, layer opacity and more
Added support for Point style and scale. Points can now be displayed in a number of styles, including dot, cross, x-mark, circle, and more. Their size can also be adjusted in a range from 50% to 500%. Point style and scale are project-wide settings available on the Appearance pane of the Project Settings window.
Layers have a new Opacity property that controls the overall opacity of its objects. With this new property, it is now easier to make great looking drawings: for example, site items like trees and other buildings can now be displayed with reduced opacity to make the main drawing stand out more.
What's New in HighDesign R6.1
HighDesign R6.1 adds new graphics features and macOS Monterey support
HighDesign R6.1 includes cool new features that greatly expand its graphics capabilities! R6.1 also adds macOS Monterey support, improved performance, new hatch patterns and symbols, and much more.
Ready for the New Mac
HighDesign R6 is a Universal Binary application that runs natively on both Apple's new, fast M1 Macs powered by Apple Silicon (ARM), and Intel-based (x86) Macs. One download to take advantage of the full power of your machines.
On the software side, HighDesign R6 is optimized for macOS Big Sur. With all the functionalities and user inteface tested, updated and fine-tuned, HighDesign R6 feels completely at home on macOS Big Sur.
Speed and Workflow
With important optimizations applied to everyday tasks, HighDesign R6 greatly improves your workflow by reducing dramatically the time required for many operations. Depending on the kind of project, screen redraws are now up to 60% faster than before; opening a file is up to 65% faster; saving a file is 25% faster.
In addition to raw speed, nearly all the existing functions for drawing, editing, architectural design and documentation have been enhanced and improved in R6, with particular attention to all the details that, at the end of the day, make a big difference.
Your Own Paper Sizes
HighDesign Standard and Pro include the new Custom Paper Sizes manager to create and store paper formats defined by you or by any of the installed printers.
Easily enter paper and margin sizes to match any national or company standard, or copy the format from those supported by the printer you use.
Smoother Viewports
The improved Viewport tool lets you create a viewport directly by a detail area: select the source sheet and then choose a detail area. Position and size of the viewport will be taken from the source area and updated live if the detail area is modified.
Enhanced Dimensions
In addition to custom units, dimensions can now use a custom precision setting different from that defined for the project.
Multiple dimensions now support a “Continue” option: clicking an existing dimension allows to continue the sequence using that dimension as base item.
Insert Recent Images
The Insert Image tool now provides a popup window for the quick selection of images used in the current project or recently loaded.
This comes particularly handy when you have to use the same image multiple times in the project, for example for material analysis, or when you use a recurrent image in all new projects, like your firm logo.
More Powerful Walls
You can now insert a compound wall by its structural component: choose between exterior, interior sides and middle line to easily align your walls to the structural grid.
New Arc by Two Points and Radius
This new method of the Arc tool lets you define a circular arc by its start, end points and radius.
Specify the chord of the arc by its start point and end points, and define its radius or enter the value.
Enhanced Fillet & Chamfer
In addition to lines and polylines, the Fillet and Chamfer commands can now be applied to rectangles and closed polygons.
With this new option, it is now easy to create rounded rectangles and shapes.
Multileader Text Annotations
The Annotations tool now has the ability to show multiple leader lines. Add as many leaders as you want with an easy click sequence, and remove with just one click.
Multi-leader annotations can use the familiar leader styles: straight, arr, or spline.
Migrate Resources and Settings
With the new Migrate Resources and Settings utility, you can easily export and import all your custom settings and resource libraries.
You can also use this command to synchronize two different support folders when you work on multiple machines or in an workplace with a shared HighDesign support folder.
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Read the complete HighDesign R7 release notes.