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DataCAD Plus 9.51 Review

DataCAD has been a very highly regarded CAD product for architecture for a very long time. It has always been a CAD system exclusively designed for architecture, and in that was something of an oddity for many years, when the general rule was that you bought a general-purpose CAD product and an add-on to adapt it more specifically for architecture.

Being designed in its basics for architecture meant that DataCAD could focus more completely on its own field and provide a set of tools specific to the type of work, and without having general-purpose tools present which could cause confusion or conflict. Today, the trend is away from CAD systems with add-on products for specific fields of work, to systems designed exclusively for the specialization. So DataCAD was ahead of its time in that.

Until now I had never had my hands on DataCAD but I have heard about it over the years from many of its users, and they were always highly satisfied with it. In particular they commented on its ease of learning and operation, and on its easy to use 3D mode of use, which in those days was extremely unusual. It was a DOS based product, and inevitably for DOS, used its own unique design of user interface and menu system.

Since the major move away from DOS to Windows, many DataCAD users lamented that their favorite CAD system did not seem to be getting updated, or showing signs of moving to Windows. After a period of inactivity, DataCAD changed hands and has experienced renewed updating and revitalization. It has moved to Windows, inevitably, which has solved all the problems of device interfacing and memory usage that plagued DOS based graphics programs.

The display and interface style retains some of its DOS heritage, which is probably liked by old DataCAD users updating, but may be a bit off-putting to newcomers accustomed to the standard Windows ways of presenting things. But this is certainly not the old DOS program adapted to run inside a Windows window, as happened with some products making the transition. This is a full Windows Application in all respects – only the display style retains some resemblance to the former DOS versions. It also continues to use some previous support services such as its own fonts instead of adopting Windows TrueType. It is not alone among CAD systems running on Windows in that. DataCAD-Plus now uses the standard Windows printer system or HPGL/2 for all plotting.

Full screen image of DataCAD Plus 9.51 in operation.

Despite DataCAD’s reputation for ease of use and learning, I found it rather hard to find my way into. I can see however, that once familiarized, it would work very well. There are two DataCAD products: DataCAD-9, and this one, DataCAD-Plus. As far as I have been able to deduce, DataCAD-9 is the latest incremental update of the long established system. It is a 2D or 3D line-based drawing system with special tools to expedite drawing building objects using lines, arcs, etc.

This product, DataCAD-Plus, occupies considerably more disk space and costs about twice as much as DataCAD-9. It installs into a \Program Files\Datacad\ folder tree totaling some 403Mb, plus another 54kb in another folder tree at \Program Files\DATACAD LLC\ which appears to hold Borland Database Engine files. DataCAD-9 on the other hand occupies one folder tree totaling 18Mb.

During the period when DataCAD on DOS was not being vigorously updated by its original American owners, a company in Europe, where DataCAD was very popular, developed a new product based on their embellishments of DataCAD, and called it SPIRIT. Now, DataCAD-Plus incorporates the ideas and sub-systems from SPIRIT, to judge by various references such as "… with this version we welcome our fellow SPIRIT users in the UK." The copyright notice states that DataCAD-Plus is jointly owned by DataCAD LLC in Connecticut USA, and SoftTECH GmbH in Germany. It may be because of its drawing together features from DataCAD and SPIRIT that I found it rather disjointed and hard to grasp overall. DataCAD-Plus clearly has a very broad scope within its field of building design, and several alternative ways of working.

It is supplied with a hardware lock for the LPT port (which caused minor interference with my printer), but uncommonly, they also offer alternative lock devices for a USB port, a laptop’s PCMCIA card slot, or an ISA internal PC slot.

The stated new features in this v9.15 release of DataCAD-Plus include the following:

(1) DWG and DXF file translation for up to AutoCAD R14 file versions using the OpenDWG modules. Some detail is given about how to obtain the best translation of various drawing features such as linetypes.

(2) A Digital Terrain Modeller is included and allows a polygon surface mesh to be "draped" over a matrix of 3D survey points or contour lines.

(3) More than 12,000 2D and 3D symbols are supplied.

(4) A new Object Viewer for fast and dynamic viewing of 3D models in shaded or hidden-line mode.

(5) "DataCAD Plus Vis" is an extra module for full rendering of 3D models. This supports drag-&-drop of library objects and textures, and can accurately simulate sun shadow casting for any time of the day and year for any global location.

(6) "ZAC" – "Zone-based Architectural Construction" – a completely new sub-system.

As far as I have been able to understand it, ZAC provides an alternative method of working on a design in 3D. It uses building "Objects" rather than collections of lines etc, and stores the details of each object in a database system (presumably that’s where the Borland BDE comes in). This appears to enable the "real-world object-based" design paradigm that is the current trend in architectural CAD. It is a method whereby you in effect model a simulation of the entire building complete with details of its materials, and then generate 2D drawings by projection from the model. The ZAC system is supplied with many common building objects in its library. It appears to allow you to define new objects without much complication, which is not so usual for object-based systems. The database system also allows storing of additional details about the components, which enables automation of the production of material lists or quantities.

It became apparent during the time allocated to review DataCAD PLus that I really need to spend a lot more time with this program to really get to grips with all its capabilities and how to make use of them. It is a complex system of considerable power and scope, and not so immediately obvious in its operation as I would like. But it is clear that it would be a very capable and versatile system after learning its ways of doing things. I am pleased that DataCAD is now being fully developed again, and its long appreciated qualities are being extended to the latest methods of design.

Unlike some software products today, both versions of DataCAD come with thorough printed manuals, totaling some 780 pages. The main manual explains all operations thoroughly but I would have liked some information on the possible approaches to working with DataCAD-Plus and how ZAC works in relation to the older methods. There is a separate ZAC tutorial. DataCAD-Plus is priced at US$1995. (DataCAD-9 is US$995).

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