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New, Smart, Affordable

Steve Hunter

Visio has not wavered from its initial positioning of IntelliCAD 98 as an alternative to AutoCAD and, now that it’s even cheaper than AutoCAD LT, CAD managers will be forced to do their homework on price justification.

Autodesk has long asserted its dominance in the 2D CAD arena. More than fifteen years has passed since Jamal Munshi of MOMS Computing bought the first copy of AutoCAD in 1982 and this period has seen the continued growth of Autodesk to its current position as the fifth largest PC software company in the world, with sales of more than 1.5 million copies of AutoCAD. More than a success, AutoCAD set the benchmark for CAD on PCs and became the yardstick by which others measured themselves.

In 1991, Autodesk founder John Walker, wrote the following: "I believe that a CAD product with these characteristics: big, cheap, widely available, tightly integrated with its host system, and promoted and marketed in an aggressive manner could, in relatively short order, displace AutoCAD from its current dominance of the CAD market. AutoCAD would not be eliminated, any more than Lotus 1-2-3 has vanished in the face of competition from Excel, but it would be placed in the same difficult position: forced to play catch-up against the more modern product, trying to reverse an erosion of market share against a newer product with momentum on its side." He wrote this in Information Letter 14, which was later published in his book "The Autodesk File". The full text is available on-line at http://www.fourmilab.ch

To be fair to Autodesk, a number of vendors have tried and failed in the period since 1991 and, through it all, Autodesk has remained on top. The sentiment of the letter reflected a widespread belief that AutoCAD was overpriced—and it’s a sentiment that you may have heard echoed many times yourself. While Autodesk has done an excellent job of returning profit to shareholders, AutoCAD users have wondered why they pay less than AUD$1,000 for Microsoft Office and more than AUD$5,000 for AutoCAD.

The ground may be about to shift, although only time will tell whether IntelliCAD can live up to the publicity currently surrounding it. Let’s start out by looking at what it doesn’t do. When you position yourself as a copycat alternative, your ultimate success may be measured more by what you can’t do than what you can.

What doesn’t it do?

3D surfacing commands are supported but solid commands and ACIS solids are not. Solids created in AutoCAD are not viewed in IntelliCAD but are preserved so that they still exist if the drawing is reloaded in AutoCAD. Complex linetypes, Release 14 hatch patterns and TrueType fonts also fall into this category. Release 14’s Object ARX programming interface is not supported, neither are the Diesel macro language or the SQL interface (ASI). This won’t effect the programming of most users, as AutoLISP, DCL, scripts and ADS are supported.

Hatching are not associative, meaning that if hatched objects are edited, the hatching will not automatically update to reflect the changes to the geometry. Dimension styles are there but the family of variations is not. There are other, less important deficiencies as well. Splines are shown as straight line segments during creation and only displayed accurately when complete. I couldn’t find a hatch dialog box that displayed the available hatch patterns graphically and there’s no boundary hatch unless the boundary happens to be a single object. There is no real-time zoom and pan or aerial (bird’s-eye) view, although it does offer support for Microsoft’s IntelliMouse.

At first glance the print dialog box doesn’t appear to support pen widths and a pen table, but you’ll discover a directory with some additional drivers that you’ll probably need to install. IntelliCAD 98 supports printing to plotters with the WinLINE plotter driver, manufactured by Software Mechanics Pty. Ltd. This company has developed a version of its WinLINE driver specifically for IntelliCAD 98 and you’ll find it in the directory \IntelliCAD 98\Drivers\Printers, along with some instructions. In my testing the driver worked well, although there is no ability to transfer information, equivalent to AutoCAD’s PCP and PC2 files. Settings such as line weights and plot rotation are set within the Windows print driver and there is no equivalent of the extended Hewlett-Packard options provided in AutoCAD’s HPCONFIG command.

User profiles are also absent, along with many of the options in the Release 14 Preferences dialog box, including the option of using a digitizing tablet. Release 14’s support of raster images, XREF interface enhancements and intelligent object properties toolbar are among the notable omissions.

What’s better?

The most requested feature on the AutoCAD wish list is the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) found in most Office applications. IntelliCAD has the ability to load multiple drawing files within a single session, which is a big saving on the system memory requirement for those working on several drawings at the same time.

Also new is the Drawing Explorer. If you attempt to access dialog boxes with DDLMODES or DDSTYLE commands, you’ll be taken directly into the Drawing Explorer. This hierarchical interface allows you to view and manage the elements of multiple open drawings, such as layers, blocks, linetypes, views, the UCS and text styles. Elements such as layers and blocks can be copied and pasted between drawing files using the Drawing Explorer. I found this to be very useful but regretted that I had to close it down to go back to work on the drawing. Ideally, both Windows should stay open while you work between them. It would also be nice to have the option of pasting drawing objects along with settings—so that pasting a layer, for example, also provides an option to paste the objects associated with the layer.

Other features where IntelliCAD is stronger than AutoCAD include unlimited undo and redo capability, as well as an improved method of editing multiple entities. AutoCAD changes most object properties using the DDMODIFY command. If you select more than one entity with this command you can only change a few common properties, such as color or layer, similar to using the DDCHPROP command. IntelliCAD combines these two editing commands into a single action, allowing you to change most of the properties of selected entities using a single, tabbed dialog box.

Edit properties for single or multiple entities in a dialog box in IntelliCAD 98.

Another long-awaited AutoCAD feature has been some kind of macro recording tool. IntelliCAD incorporates this by allowing you to create script files on the fly, with 3 commands that allow you to start recording, stop recording and replay the script. When you start recording you are asked to supply the name of the script file you’re about to generate. Screen selections are saved within the script file as coordinate values. This feature is very useful in applying common changes to a number of drawing settings, such as changes to scale factor, layers and dimensions.

A number of Windows interface features have been implemented very well in IntelliCAD. Holding down the Shift key, as an example, temporarily enables orthogonal mode.

Customizing

Customizing IntelliCAD needs to be dealt with in a series of articles specializing on the subject. Here’s an overview of the customizing capability—which has been well implemented in IntelliCAD. The customizing dialog box provides 4 tabs—menus, toolbars, keyboard and aliases.

In the menu tab, menus are shown as an explorer-style tree that contains all menu sub-items. You simply select a menu item and pick a standard command or enter a custom command and help string to associate with it. Menu items and sub-items can be inserted, deleted and renamed. Changes to the menu structure are updated as soon as the customize dialog box is closed. This type of menu customizing capability is what should be in AutoCAD.

IntelliCAD's customization dialog allows you to simply and quickly customize menus, toolbars, keys and aliases.

Toolbar customizing behaves a little differently to AutoCAD. With the toolbar tab selected, you pick on any visible button and change its properties within the customize dialog box. The toolbar sections of existing AutoCAD menu files can be imported into IntelliCAD, but I found that the toolbar customizing wasn’t as good as that found in AutoCAD.

Keyboard customizing is similar to AutoCAD’s accelerator keys and I like its ability to create new keyboard assignments by pressing a shortcut key combination. For those with long memories, this is similar to Generic CADD’s MA (Macro Assign) command. Aliases are similar to those defined in AutoCAD’s PGP file or Release 14’s alias editor in the bonus tools. It also provides an interesting insight into some of the command structure, where a standard AutoCAD command such as OFFSET is assigned to IntelliCAD’s PARALLEL command. If you type BAGEL, IntelliCAD 98 activates the DONUT command (programmers working too late at night?!).

IntelliCAD allows AutoCAD MNU and MNS files to be imported for creating menus and toolbars—PGP files can be imported to define aliases. I found that this feature worked well with existing AutoCAD menus and toolbars. IntelliCAD menus and keyboard customizing can only be exported in proprietary IntelliCAD format. Toolbars can’t be exported at all and aliases can be exported in IntelliCAD (ICA) and PGP formats.

I wasn’t able to test the ADS compatibility, but AutoLISP programs and dialog boxes worked immediately within IntelliCAD. My SteelPRO utility, comprising 1,700 lines of lisp and several dialog boxes, operated without modification—a big tick for IntelliCAD which can now draw on the existing application pool of several thousand (or is that several hundred thousand?) existing AutoLISP programs.

Drawing

I have covered most of the drawing differences earlier in the section titled "What doesn’t it do?". What else can you say? A line, is a line, is a line. The input of relative coordinates is accepted in both delta and polar formats and the draw and modify command sets are almost identical to AutoCAD. Direct distance entry and tracking are not supported. IntelliCAD commands provide a prompt menu as you work your way through the commands. When drawing a line or hatching, as an example, the prompt menu is displayed to provide you with appropriate options, depending on the construction stage.

AutoCAD users will also have to hit the F3 key immediately after starting IntelliCAD 98 for the first time, in order to display the command line. While vital to AutoCAD users, the command line looks out of place in today’s Windows programs. IntelliCAD uses the arrow keys to pan the display, which means the up arrow is not available to return previous commands.

A dynamic view control dialog box is an improvement when working in 3D. Rendering is included but seems quite primitive when compared to Release 14’s raytracing, materials and lighting options. IntelliCAD supports DXF import and export, as well as the ability to save back to earlier DWG formats (ACAD v2.6).

Summary

In this review I’ve tried to highlight IntelliCAD 98’s strengths and weaknesses when compared to AutoCAD Release 14. For some purchasers this choice simply won’t exist as a result of budget constraints—so comparisons with AutoCAD LT 97 may be more appropriate. Faced with this choice, the decision will come down to 100% compatibility versus a powerful programming interface.

AutoCAD LT still lacks a programming interface, which ultimately limits its power and application. Some of the AutoCAD third-party developers are also developing applications for IntelliCAD—Ketiv Technologies Inc., Eagle Point Software Inc., Hitachi America Ltd. and Cyco Software BV are already shipping add-on products for IntelliCAD 98. For some users, the capability of running in-house customizing and powerful applications for IntelliCAD will win out. For others, demanding 100% similarity and familiarity, AutoCAD LT may be worth the additional cost.

Whichever way you decide, as users we can expect to benefit from the stiff competition and, at current street prices, IntelliCAD 98 is excellent value. At this price we can expect that many AutoCAD sites will begin to evaluate and incorporate IntelliCAD within their CAD structure.

This interview was originally pubished in CAD User Australia/New Zealand. Reproduced with permission.

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