Impact 2022 offers a range of new features and product enhancements designed to streamline packaging design workflow.
The eagerly-anticipated software upgrade is the last released under an extended two-year development cycle with future releases anticipated to take place more frequently.
This latest version was released for some Impact customers towards the end of 2022, but is now available to all users. It includes performance and speed enhancements, new and improved 3D tools to bring designs to life and better PDF password support for enhanced security.
Matthew Hewitt, Business Development Director at Arden Software said, ‘We are always striving to bring improvements to our software to deliver the best possible user-experience and time savings for our customers, and we’re confident this latest version will help improve and streamline the creative process for packaging designers, die-makers and brand owners alike.’
‘This latest version of our CAD software marks the last in our extended development cycle, where historically we tend to launch a significant release every two years. However, in line with customer expectations and today’s modern software delivery cycles, we’ll be delivering more frequent releases so Impact users can benefit from new developments more regularly.
‘The next major release is already hot on the heels of Impact 2022, and it promises to be a game-changer for the packaging design industry with the introduction of constraint-based design.’
Key highlights of Impact 2022 include:
3D Navigation Widget: an on-screen widget has been added for permanent camera control. The new tool offers some of the functionality of a 3D mouse, without the expense of the additional hardware. Users can click and drag on the widget to interactively control the 3D view without breaking out of the ‘dimension’ tool, for example.
3D Snapshot improvements: the 3D Snapshot tool has been completely re-worked. A new dockable toolbox has been added which allows users to configure the Snapshot tool and take multiple snapshots with ease.
3D lock mode: users can now deploy horizontal and vertical cursor lock modes on 3D designs, extending the range of 3D dimension and enquire tools.
Password support for PDF imports and exports: when exporting PDFs, it’s now possible to add password protection to files for enhanced security, as well as directly importing secure PDFs.
Expanded file exchange support: Impact is now able to import Cimex CimPACK (*.cim) files. Arden Software acquired American Software company Cimex in 2020, so the new feature will offer more flexibility for die-makers, CimPACK and Impact users alike.
Improved searching: when configuring keyboard shortcuts, users can now search for tools, as opposed to looking through the relevant tool category.
Enhanced layer list display: it’s now possible to show expanded layer details within the Drawings Hierarchy tab of the Impact Explorer for quicker and easier identification. This highly customisable feature allows for a rich display of both layer information and database field content.
The Arden Software Development Team are now working on the next major release due later this year, which will include a revolutionary new design tool set to transform the packaging design industry. The ground-breaking new feature will see Impact become the first ever packaging design CAD software to offer geometric constraint tools.
This highly anticipated update, which enriches the entire use of the product’s design and editing capabilities, moves away from the legacy history-based approach to parametrics, capturing the designer’s intent as they draw, and also offering the unique advantage that any existing or imported drawing can be resized quickly and effortlessly.
Constraint-based design is more commonly used within CAD software in other industries, such as architectural or Mechanical CAD, but it has never been seen before in packaging design software.
