The essential difference between Drafix QuickCAD and Drafix Professional CAD is that the latter includes a programmable interface and a CD ROM of pre-drawn symbols.
Editor's Note: These products are now long discontinued and these articles are retained only because of their constant popularity. See the foot of the article for alternative recomendations.
Design and Drafting
Everything I said about QuickCAD applies equally to Drafix Professional
CAD. It is the same program in this department. I found the drawing controls difficult to master and even after spending some time trying to draft up various projects, I never really got any faster. Essentially all the tools are there, but the program lacks the shortcuts required for fast use.
Drafix certainly enables you to do accurate design and drafting, but I just couldn’t get the hang of doing it quickly.
Drafix Professional CAD The distinguishing features of this professional version of Drafix CAD software is the programmable interface and the
symbol library.
Macro Language
Drafix describes its macro language as similar to the C programming language. That’s probably enough to frighten off the first half of any group of people looking for programmability in a CAD program. The syntax and programming structure is certainly similar to C. However the macro language is not as complicated as C.
The range of functions and
access to the drawing database is excellent. The command syntax is consistent and quite easy to learn. The most common procedures people would want to automate would be automatic routines on startup, exit and opening a new drawing. These events are all serviced by specific functions. Other design and drawing tasks you might want to automate include parametric drawing tasks that require designer input, routine editing tasks and text manipulation. Macros can operate on multiple drawings in sequence (batch processing) and interact with other
Windows applications through dynamic data exchange (DDE).
Macros for Drafix must be edited in the Macro Editor inside the program. The online help is comprehensive and very good. As well as including an excellent tutorial section, all of the items I looked up included example code that was both instructive and useful (a rare combination).
The also includes a number of ready-to-use macros ready to use. Unfortunately, none of them are documented, so you will need to open them in the editor and/or experiment to find out what they do.
Drafix macros are not protectable, so there if you intend to distribute them, the source code is available for anyone to edit.
Symbol Library
Symbol libraries are one of the greatest productivity aids of all time. Working on the "draw once" principle, symbols are simply placed on new drawings as required. The success of libraries lies in their capacity to either cover the majority of differences you might require in your work, or provide the flexibility you might need.
Drafix Professional goes for the bulk solution in shipping a CD-ROM of 5000+ symbols. The library categories include the regulars such as AEC, Electrical, Home, Landscape, Mechanical, Network and Office. The libraries contain a wealth of data and probably sufficient to satisfy most designers who have fairly standard requirements. Some of the symbols may need adjusting to suit requirements, but this is easily done.
Conclusion
The Drafix symbol library with 5000+ symbols sounds like it contains a lot of symbols. In fact the number of symbols bears little relationship to the value. There are entire areas of the library that most users will never want to use. Even so, the inclusion of the library will save many people many hours or even days of work.
The inclusion of the macro language makes Drafix a worthwhile design and drawing automation tool. It has the power to accomplish any repetitive and time consuming drawing tasks with ease.
Drafix Professional is a good program for someone who likes the interface and can work comfortably with it. It is powerful enough to handle sophisticated design automation.
The only worry I have with recommending Drafix is its life expectancy. As a Softdesk product, it is now an Autodesk product and the only real Autodesk product is
AutoCAD. Therefore Drafix does not appear to have a rosy future. With this uncertainty surrounding Drafix, any investment in time learning and developing automated applications within it might not be a prudent investment of your time - and at the end of the day, with CAD, that is the biggest investment you will have to make.
