Key Articles

• Stardraw AV Stimulus Package Finds Favor
• Stardraw Control - Webservices Explained
• TechTip - Using Images in Stardraw Design Applications
• New Drivers Now Available
• New Training Dates
• Symbols Updates

Stardraw AV Stimulus Package Finds Favor

Introduced in June this year as a positive response to the credit market's continuing failure to revive, the Stardraw AV Stimulus Package has proved highly popular with integrators looking to enhance their professionalism and productivity.  Consequently we are pleased to extend the Stimulus Package offer for an additional six months, particularly since it seems that credit from traditional providers is still hard to come by.

Own Stardraw AV for Only $300 a Month.

For 12 monthly payments of $300 you can enjoy all the benefits of Stardraw AV, normally priced at $3,000, without the usual upfront investment. In addition, this offer includes your year 2 Annual Subscription (normally $450) which delivers data updates, online services and unlimited free technical support during your second year of use. So in year 2 there's nothing - nothing - to pay for maintenance or support, or anything else, for that matter.

Our program is that simple: 12 monthly payments, nothing to pay in year 2, and on your final payment you own Stardraw AV, the world's most popular professional Audio-Visual system design and documentation package.

This offer is open to customers in the US and Canada only. For more information please contact Joel Schwartz on +1-800-982-7709 or email sales@stardraw.com

Stardraw Control - Webservices Explained

The launch of Stardraw Control 2010 in September saw the addition of support for WebServices.  This is an astonishingly powerful and flexible feature that means that using Stardraw Control you can control anything, over anything, from anything, anywhere.

Sounds to good to be true?  Well, we do make a few assumptions:

1. The device you want to control is remotely-controllable
2. The device can be connected, somehow, to a computer or network, either directly or by using a gateway device
3. The control protocol for that device is open, documented and supported
4. The user interface device can talk to a network usually, but not exclusively, using HTTP

Pretty reasonable assumptions, we hope you agree, and if they're met it really does mean that you can control anything over any protocol from anything, whether it's a computer, PDA, SmartPhone (yes, including iPhone and iPod Touch), or indeed anything that can host a webbrowser, or can talk HTTP.  The key is WebServices.

WebServices allow machines to communicate and interoperate across a network. Stardraw Control's implementation of WebServices includes support of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) which allows for a rich user experience through, for example, an HTML interface.

We have published a series of movies which show in detail how you can use WebServices and Ajax to conrol anything from anything. Please put aside a few minutes to watch and learn how Stardraw Control exploits these techonologies to become, quite simply, the most powerful control software currently available.

View WebServices Movie

TechTip - Using Images in Stardraw Design Applications

It's common practice to use images in Stardraw Audio, Stardraw AV, Stardraw AV Lite and Stardraw Lighting 2D, for instance to include a company logo in .BMP, .JPG, .PNG or TIFF format. We know that some users have encountered difficulties doing this, so this TechTip explains why images and other objects may not display as expected, and how to resolve the problem to get perfect results every time.

Background - you can use Edit | Insert New Object | Create from File to insert almost any kind of file in your Stardraw design. In this way you can insert images, documents or anything else in your drawing, even though Stardraw AV itself may not know how to handle that particular file format.  The technology in use is called Object Linking and Embedding (OLE).  With OLE, Stardraw AV acts as an OLE Client and calls the application that is associated with the filetype.  That application, the OLE Server, renders the object within the Stardraw drawing and can also be used to edit the object in place.  For this technology to work, the filetype, e.g. .BMP, must be correctly associated with an application that is OLE compliant, e.g. MSPaint.

Issue - some users find that when they insert an image it is not correctly displayed.  Instead of an image they get a placeholder that shows the image filename and an icon.  This is caused by the association of the filetype with an application that is not OLE compliant.  File association is handled by Windows: it is machine-specific and depends on the applications you have installed on your computer.  Applications can force themselves to be associated with a particular filetype by default and if the application is not OLE compliant - and many are not - then Insert New Object will not work for that filetype on that machine.

Resolution - you can edit the Windows Registry to manually set the association of a filetype to a known OLE compliant application.  In this procedure we will associate the .BMP filetype with MSPaint.  MSPaint is installed with Windows and can be used for almost any 'picture' format including .GIF, .JPG, .PNG and .TIF.  (Note that changing file association may affect the default behavior of your computer, for example when you doubleclick on a file in Windows Explorer that file may now open in the newly-defined default application.)

Associating the .BMP file format with MSPaint

1. To open Registry Editor, click on the Windows Start button,  click on Run, type in "regedit" (without the quotes) and click on OK
2. Expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
3. Scroll down to and select .bmp
4. Doubleclick on '(Default)' and change 'Value data' to "Paint.Picture" (without the quotation marks)
5. Doubleclick on 'Content Type' and change 'Value data' to "image/bmp" (without the quotation marks)
6. Close the Registry Editor
7. Reboot your computer

Now, in Stardraw AV, you will be able to use Edit | Insert New Object | Create from File to insert any .BMP file into any Stardraw document.

Happy Object Linking and Embedding!

If you have any questions about Stardraw AV please visit the Stardraw Design/Documentation Applications forum - just follow the link below.

Stardraw Forums

New Drivers for Stardraw Control

Since the last newsletter, the following advanced drivers have been added to the Stardraw Control product family:

These, as with all published drivers, will be automatically added to your Stardraw Control product library when you choose to accept Library Updates on startup.

New Training Dates

European Master Distributor COMM-TEC is offering a program of training courses to be held at their Uhingen, Germany headquarters. Courses are available for design/documentation applications and control applications, and sessions are held in English or German - please book accordingly.

To reserve your seat please email stardraw@comm-tec.de. For more details click on the link below.

COMM-TEC Training

Symbols Updates

In October the following libraries were updated in one or more of Stardraw's design/documentation applications (Stardraw Audio 2007, Stardraw AV 2007 and Stardraw AV Lite 2007). Click on a manufacturer name to see full details of that library.

To update your Offline Libraries, select Options | Synchronize Offline Libraries in your Stardraw application.