Discussion: Purple Pen Software

I have been experimenting with Purple Pen and mostly it works well, but I have come to a problem when a new OCAD base map is used and the controls are no longer located correctly on the map. Other course setting software allows you to move all the controls as a group but I cannot see a way to do that with Purple Pen.
Does anyone know how to do this?

This doesn't help you, but I encountered the same situation once, and I couldn't find a way to move all of the controls at once.

If there is a way, I also am interested in learning what it is.

How about going into 0CAD and using Extras-MoveMap to get the map back to where it used to be? (Although I can think of some reasons why one wouldn't want to do this in some situations... maybe.)

On the Purple Pen website I see that there hasn't been an update to the software since version 1.0.1 over a year ago (March 2009). Is it still being developed?

The freeware Purple Pen is awesome at what it does, as long as you are willing to work around what it doesn't. Many fancy features are lacking, but for laying down simple events, with simple courses, it excels.

Have you seen that ipad application that facilitates "painting" effortlessly and intuitively with your finger? I think Purple Pen does the same thing for course setting. Course setting ideas can flow from your mind to the map without the tool getting in the way.

A resource that may be useful is a the Yahoo group for Purple Pen.

Anyways... Shifting 40 controls 5mm to the northwest shouldn't take that long, right? Five minutes?

Or you could spend 310 USD on Condes and get everything you want.

A Condes subscription can be purchased by a club and then everyone who sets courses in the club can use it.

It is well worth it.

Condes also has a very helpful developer, any queries or problems that you have, email him and he will answer promptly, had a problem with a map change setting yesterday and he emailed back with a solution in about 1 hour

I submitted a course using PurplePen on an OCAD 6 map to a course consultant who was unable to get PurplePen working. In trying to get the courses to another format I tried saving them as OCAD 6 but all I got were the control locations (no base map). How can I combine the base map with the purple pen courses saved to OCAD?

The course files are just that, the courses. you need to load the base map as a template, but i think you need at least OCAD 8 to do that.

You could always just print/save the courses from PP to pdf files if you just need to get the courses to the consultant.

How do you convert courses from PP to pdf?

You should be able to download free software to create PDFs -- PDFcreator worked for me from a variety of programs, though I never used it from ocad. Worth a try.

Another free PDF creator is "Free PDF XP", which I've been using lately, and it works well. (And I can confirm it works from OCAD.) Once installed, it shows up as a printer, so you can create PDF's from any application that has print capability.

One point about PP -- although you can print directly from it, and create PDF's directly from it, the quality isn't the best (PP even states this). What they recommend is to create an OCAD file from PP -- they make it very easy to do. So when I create PDF's to be sent for printing, I'll first create an OCAD file, then create a PDF. I've compared the quality side by side, and the quality is in fact distinctly better when going through the OCAD step, as PP states.

Beware that PDF will lower the resolution and you need to drop to OCAD and create a EPS file for quality prints

I have found that OCAD10 Viewer -- a free download -- makes decent PDF files.

The developer of Purple Pen is in my club, has a family, and had less time to work on it after getting a job.

I love the simplicity of Purple Pen, and for me, this trumps it being a bit less powerful than some other course design/printing software. And it's free. I once had the same problem with a new version of a map not registering and hence me needing to move a bunch of controls, but I didn't think to try the "Move map" functionality in OCAD.

As RLShadow says, print quality is usually better when creating PDF files through OCAD. The reason for this is because PDF files produced using PDF printer drivers in PP create rasterised versions of the map. To produce a vectorised image, you need to print via OCAD (or OCAD10 viewer), either File/Export, selecting PDF as the export format, or printing to a PDF printer driver (I use cutePDF).

A rasterised version may be adequate, depending on the complexity of the map and the standard of the competition.

I haven't found any difference in quality between EPS and PDF formats, and PDF is a lot simpler to deal with. See here for Adobe's discussion of the differences between the two formats.

We (GAOC) print to a file from the printer driver used by our print shop. We e-mail the PRN file to the print shop, and they simply copy the file to the printer. This method gives us complete control over the size, layout, and margins of the finished map.
When printing a PDF file, it is tempting to use the "fit to page" option. This would ruin the scale of the map. Copying the PRN file to the printer removes the temptation to change any settings.