• Zoom from 6400' to 1/32"
• Detailed Print Preview
• Draw a Series of Parallel Lines
• Draw Double Walled Rectangles
• Wall Thickness in Fractions
• Windows widths and patterns
• Metes & Bounds
• Prevent Printed Text From Scaling Too Big
• Create a Column of Text
• Snap Grid spacing is saved for each zoom level)
• Speed settings are also saved separately for each zoom level.
• New Zoom Bar buttons provide instant zooming to any level

  version 4.6:

• Print Preview
• Higher Screen Resolution

  version 4.5:

• More Colors
• Customize Colors
• Scalable Fills
• More Polygon sides
• New File Format

Zoom from 6400' to 1/32"
Version 5 is a major re-write of the graphic engine.

Previous versions severely limited the ability to magnify areas of the plan, and to draw in fine detail. Now, you can draw plans as large as you like (6400 ft square - 900,000 mm in metric mode) and still Zoom in to 1/32 of an inch (1mm in metric mode).

It is no longer necessary to select a drawing size for your plans. Plans of any size can be zoomed in to draw in minute detail.

New Zoom Bar buttons provide instant zooming to any level and provide good feedback.

Scrollbars shift the plan at any zoom level, and a special button at the beginning of each scrollbar shifts the plan creating more drawing area at the left and top of the plan.

Buttons move the plan to the upper left, or fit the entire plan to the viewing area and help navigate the plan while zooming.

Detailed Print Preview
View the plan on the screen, in detail as it will appear on the paper.
Zoom in or out to see the whole plan on the "paper" or zoom in to see more detail.

Adjust text size to fit the printing scale prior to printing.

Parallel Lines
Adjust the distance between lines and draw continuous parallel lines. Corners are cleaned up after you.

Double Walled Rectangles
Adjust the distance between lines and draw double-walled rectangles.

Wall Thickness in Fractions
Wall thickness can now be set in fractions of an inch down to 1/32" or to 1 mm in metric mode.

Windows widths and patterns.
Windows now have adjustable widths and patterns, in addition to fill and border colors.

Metes & Bounds.
Metes & Bounds draw lot lines from the data in your deed description.

• Enter a Distance for the line segment
• Select a Direction
• Enter the Degrees
• Enter the Minutes if applicable
• Enter the Seconds if applicable
• Select the Bearing
• Click the "Add to List" button to add to the Metes & Bounds list.
• (Use the shortcut keys as a shortcut for cardinal directions)
• When the list is complete, click the "Draw List to Plan" button to draw the plot.
• Use the "Calculate" menu item to calculate the area before drawing.

Prevent Printed Text From Scaling Too Big
A Text Size Limiting feature prevents printed text from scaling too big when small plans are printed.

Available from the Preferences Printing tab or the Detailed Print Preview screen.

When small plans are scaled larger, the text in those plans often gets too big to be readable and attractive. You can set a limit beyond which printed text will not go. For instance: set the printed text Limit to 12 point to assure that no text appears larger than 12 point on your printouts.

You can exempt certain text from this rule. You may want a title to appear larger than the limit: Select the text you want to exempt by clicking on it Click the "Exempt Selected text From Limit" button.

You can disable this limit by clicking the "Disable Text Size Limit" button.

Only printed text is affected by this setting.

Create a Column of Text
You can select multiple text elements from anywhere on the plan and form them into a column.

• Select two or more text elements
• Drag and drop elements to re-arrange them in the list
• Select single or double spacing
• Click the "Create Column" button to move the text elements into a column.
• Move the column in place and double-click to anchor.

Snap Grid spacing is saved for each zoom level)
You will use the Snap Grid Settings form to adjust the grid spacing. See Preferences Snap Grid for other options.

Speed settings are also saved separately for each zoom level.
"Speed" is a term used for the distance that the cursor moves when the Number Pad keys are pressed. Use the Speed Panel buttons or the Plus and Minus keys to change this distance.

New Zoom Bar buttons provide instant zooming to any level.
Each of the buttons with round dots select a zoom level.

As the buttons approach the Plus sign, the plan becomes further "zoomed in". You will see a smaller area of the plan, but in greater detail.

As the buttons approach the minus sign, the pln becomes further "zoomed out". You will see more of the plan, but with less detail.

• Click the plus sign directly to cause the next higher zoom level to be selected.
• Click the minus sign directly to cause the next lower zoom level to be selected.

The distance assigned to each screen pixel at the current zoom level is shown in a label below these buttons

Customize colors
From the Edit menu, you can manually change the red, green,blue (RGB) of any color currently used in the plan by typing in a new value for red, green, or blue.

Scalable Fills
Scalable fill patterns used to be limited to rectangular shapes.
You can still draw rectangular scalable fills, but you can also make polygons with up to 32 sides filled with scalable fill patterns.

Increased polygon vertices
The maximum number of Polygon sides used to be 16. Now you can draw polygons with up to 32 sides..

New File Format:
The format of plan files has changed to accommodate the above new features.

When you load a plan that was made in a previous version, it will be automatically converted to the new format.
A backup of the old file format will be made with the same name and location, but with a ".bk" extension.

This conversion is not backwards compatible. That means that new or converted plans cannot be read in older versions of Home Plan Pro.

To load a converted plan in an older version of Home Plan Pro, you would have to re-name the backup to have it's original ".pln" extension.

Print Preview
View the plan on the screen as you change scale, margins, etc prior to printing.

Higher Screen Resolution
Doubles the screen resolution to allow more precise cursor movement. Note: Use of this feature is not recommended for Windows 95/98 due to lack of graphic resources.
It's turned off by default for those systems.