Struc Plus IntelliCAD 2000

I recently reviewed a free download version of IntelliCAD 2000, and found it offered powerful CAD capabilities, with some facilities that had been in IntelliCAD 98 absent. Those are raster image support, 3D shading and rendering. If those facilities do not matter to you then it is indeed a bargain.

IntelliCAD 98 owed a lot of its acceptance I think to the fact that it was just about 100% interchangeable and inter-workable with AutoCAD R14, except for 3D solids. Quite a lot of offices added to their AutoCAD workforce by using the much cheaper IntelliCAD 98. In contrast,  IntelliCAD 2000, although reads and writes AutoCAD 2000 DWG files, does not have support for most of the very useful new features introduced in AutoCAD 2000. As a result, it cannot be used in the way IntelliCAD 98 could, alongside AutoCAD 2000 to augment the number of users in an office cheaply. There are too many differences.

It appears that DWG files created in AutoCAD 2000 using features that are absent from IntelliCAD 2000 can be edited and re-saved in IntelliCAD 2000 without the unsupported features becoming lost. But editing such files in IntelliCAD 2000 would I think, very likely give rise to problems and confusion on the part of the IntelliCAD user that could lead to errors, because of information contained in the AutoCAD DWG file not being visible or showing differently in IntelliCAD.

But in its own right as a CAD system, IntelliCAD 2000 is an excellent product with all the capability of AutoCAD R14 except for 3D solids, and some extra refinements and features. Although it does not have the various new features of AutoCAD 2000, its ability to open and work upon DWG files created by users of AutoCAD 2000 will certainly be a useful capability for those whose CAD work is often based upon existing work done by others. This would apply for example to consultants designing services or structural details upon architectural outlines supplied to them.

I think the major area of application for IntelliCAD 2000 will be as a vehicle for add-on specialized products that were designed to run on AutoCAD using Lisp, ADS or ARX programming. There are a few differences in its programming interface that makes a slightly modified version of large add-on products necessary. Most of the minor Lisp programs intended for AutoCAD will run with no alteration or just very minor changes of some function names.

Several makers of large add-on specialized systems are already producing IntelliCAD versions. It makes a big difference to the total cost of their products when the underlying required CAD product costs a few hundred instead of several thousand dollars, yet makes no difference at all to the capability of the combined product. In some cases, particularly products with a rather narrow specialization in cost-sensitive markets, it can make the difference between market success and being too costly to sell. Also, producers of specialized add-on software can include the IntelliCAD product in their own product package, whereas AutoCAD has to be obtained through authorized reseller channels. The supplier of this full version of IntelliCAD 2000, Struc Plus of Melbourne, Australia is one such producer of a large specialized add-on -- the well known Struc Plus system for structural design and detailing.

The most obvious new feature in the 2000 version of IntelliCAD is TrueType fonts. While this doesn’t do anything to enhance the CAD functionality, it does do a lot to improve the appearance of the users’ end product, especially in situations where appearance is important. It is time for AutoCAD users, and now IntelliCAD users too, to give up those crude-looking stroke fonts developed for the limitations of pen plotters and restricted DOS memory. There seems to be some reluctance to move to TrueType fonts in the AutoCAD community, where they have been available for some time, but I think it makes very good sense to use a font system that is processed by the operating system rather than being implemented within the CAD application.

The elements missing from the free download version of IntelliCAD 2000 referred to at the beginning were components subject to licensing by other suppliers – raster images, 3D shading and rendering. In the Struc Plus commercial version, the purchase price includes payment of the additional licenses which are included on the CD. So this version includes full support for inserting and overlaying raster images, and a very complete photo-realistic 3D rendering system with full control of surface textures and lighting arrangements.

The Struc Plus IntelliCAD 2000 includes licensed components such as the rendering module.

The lighting dialog box presented a pictorial view of how a rendered view will be lit.

Comparing with AutoCAD 2000 and its new features, IntelliCAD 2000 has no auto-snap, object tracking, multiple PaperSpaces, Lineweights, Design Center, or the vastly changed new plotting systems. IntelliCAD 98 did have better interfaces for several AutoCAD functions than AutoCAD R14 did, such as the pop-up ‘object property sheets’, and significantly, AutoCAD 2000 now does those things similarly. IntelliCAD 2000 retains those features of course.

AutoCAD 2000’s Lineweights are ignored in the display, and cannot be accessed in the plot setup, which remains identical to 98’s. I consider the addition of lineweights in AutoCAD 2000 to be a most welcome and long overdue feature, but sadly it is not in IntelliCAD 2000. If an AutoCAD 2000 DWG file that makes use of lineweights is opened in IntelliCAD 2000, the lines all show as the same minimum width. IntelliCAD’s plotting interface remains the same as in v98 and cannot use on-screen lineweight properties to control printed line-widths. So you have to continue to rely on the long established AutoCAD practice of using on-screen line colors to control printed line widths. It may well be true that AutoCAD users will for the most part continue to do likewise regardless of 2000’s new options, but that is more a reflection on the reluctance to change in the AutoCAD community than on any practical considerations.

IntelliCAD 2000 retains the single PaperSpace scheme of R14. AutoCAD 2000 now calls PaperSpace ‘Layouts’ and you can have many of them, typically and most usefully, one for each sheet to be printed from the one ModelSpace design. In IntelliCAD, the Layout defined as the first Layout ‘tab’ in AutoCAD becomes IntelliCAD’s PaperSpace, and any additional Layouts are ignored. It cannot handle AutoCAD’s new non-rectangular Layout viewports, and more disappointingly, still cannot handle R14’s or 2000’s clipped x-refs – a critical capability in some offices. I found that although this version does have the full rendering system, it did not seem able to show rendered views inside a PaperSpace viewport, which if so could be rather a problem.

While lacking those AutoCAD 2000 enhancements, this StrucPlus version is supplied with several extras that are not ordinarily part of the IntelliCAD system. These are produced by Struc Plus and are called SPTools. They appear on their own menu, and provide quite an array of useful tools to simplify and speed up common tasks. Notable items include a preset color-to-line width scheme, sheet and scale setup, various pointers and callout symbols.

Struc Plus Tools is included with this commercial release of IntelliCAD 2000. It is a suite of drafting utilities that speed and standardize drawing creation.

Another component of Struc Plus Tools is the library of predrawn technical symbols. A small addition but highly beneficial in reducing the time to get drawings out the door.

Despite the deficiencies I mentioned compared to AutoCAD 2000, this is a very capable 2D/3D CAD system that would serve many users very well for serious work. In its own right IntelliCAD 2000 is an excellent CAD product, but it is definitely not an AutoCAD 2000 equivalent. It will certainly serve extremely well as a basis for specialized add-on systems, and is undeniably excellent value.