CAD Plugin Tracks CAD Activity

By DE Editors

OFCDesk (Chicago IL) is releasing ProjectControl, a CAD plugin designed to reveal detailed managerial information about CAD jobs in general.

The advantage of the program is that besides tracking CAD usage time, it is sensitive to application switching. If the user leaves the CAD application to do something else, time is not counted. View-only commands (such as pan or zoom) can also stop the counting.

The developers expect the plugin to assist diverse business areas. For now, ProjectControl tracks time in AutoCAD, Revit, OFCDesk IDC, MS Excel and Word activities, being 3Dstudio and Photoshop the next targets. Among its features are automatic calculation over individualized fees, .PDF and .XLS exporting capabilities, cost and time reports organized by project, task, user and time span. The free version allows keeping an eye on up to three workers, and is upgradeable.

Managers can distribute project permissions and set deadlines for each remotely, allowing precise cost control over spread out teams and outsourcing. No backups are needed, and the data can be retrieved through the internet.

ProjectControl has two components: a plugin, which displays a window every time the CAD application loads, making it impossible to skip log on; and a standalone interface, used by the manager to customize permissions, fees, deadlines, tasks, and print reports.

For details, go to OFCDesk LLC.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.