A new version of CAST's popular visualization software is now available! We checked carefully what's new in the world of "What you see is what you get," and the manufacturer seems to have started to listen strongly to the voices of users because some interesting and eagerly awaited features have appeared.
LED tape generator
One of the new features made available in version 2023 is an LED strip generator. Setting up this type of lighting involves clumsy clicking through more windows to create a "device," just as is done in the LED screen generator. However, this time we got a facilitation as to the shape of our generated strip. Creation is done based on the curves we draw, which are available in the software (line, curved line, circle, etc.) and give them the appropriate pixel density and DMX function. The generator allows us to simulate a tape on any shape we can draw in the software or import from other CAD software as an Origin Object.
What deserves a plus is that we define ourselves the DMX channels our tape has (Color, intensity, strobe, etc.) and we can specify the form of control, whether it should be for the whole tape or we want to simulate multi-element control. By selecting advanced control during pre-wiz, we have the ability to control individual pixels via DMX protocol. What's important to remember - as the manufacturer points out - is that this is only a generator and does not allow us to calculate current requirements or tape cut points.
New particle generator
Another new feature implemented in this powerful software worth noting is the particle animation system. We finally get the ability to accurately control and effect pyrotechnics. From smoke (not to be confused with haze) through fire, confetti or CO2. It doesn't look terribly encouraging at this point yet, but it's a nice introduction to the development of this technology in the program.
Automatic creation of shortcuts for devices from the library
A recent improvement that caught my attention. Finally, after many battles, the devices we inset into our project will automatically add themselves to the shortcuts, so we can once and for all forget about adding devices to the speed dial. The program will do it for us. It is worth noting that, in addition, we finally got the option to delete layers in which there are objects. We can also say goodbye forever to manually cleaning layers before deleting them.
Of course, with the new version we get a number of small improvements and bug fixes to make our work easier. All the added and fixed things can be found on the developer's website.
