Conference hydra::amiga_v1

1628.0. "At last, a REAL CAD package..." by LEDS::ACCIARDI (Heisenberg may have slept here) Mon Aug 29 1988 17:41

        After waiting for a few years for the Amiga to fulfill it's promise
        as a serious low(!) cost CAD machine, and being disappointed by
        Aegis Draw Plus, I convinced myself that X-CAD was worth a serious
        look.  Computer Shopper had a small blurb that quoted some
        remarkable performance benchmarks from X-CAD as compared to AutoCAD
        running on an IBM PC/AT.

        The standard benchmark is to draw 1000 circles on the screen.  The
        IBM took over two minutes; X-CAD on the Amiga (without a math chip)
        took 10 seconds!

        That really is pretty incredible, especially since our $40,000
        MegaTEK terminals and Vax 8600s cannot draw a display that quickly,
        at least not under UniGraphics.

        So, $395 later, I had X-CAD up and running.  The program operates
        only in 400 line mode, so a FlickerFixer or long-per monitor is a
        real help.  They also recommend at least 2.0 MBytes of RAM and a 20
        MByte hard drive.  The software comes on two bulging disks, and a
        huge looseleaf manual is supplied.  The documentation is very
        concise and accurate, not at all 'cute' or 'entertaining'.  They
        start with a tutorial session and move on to a complete user
        manual.

        First of all, I can safely say that this is a Real Cad Program. 
        Anything that I can do under UniGraphics seems to have a parallel
        in X-CAD.  There are some huge differences, however...

        UniGraphics is completely menu driven, with menu heirarchy
        arranged from top down, ie; the first menu screen has 12 choices, 

        POINT/CURVE CREATION
        SURFACE CREATION
        DIMENSIONING
        DRAFTING AIDS
        DRAWING CONTROL
        ...
        ...
        TRANSFORMATIONS
        FILE MANAGEMENT 	

        ... and so on.  Each button push (there is a seperate button box)
        brings up a sub menu, with further submenus nested in a context
        sensitive way.

        X-CAD uses a different method called VERB-NOUN-MODIFIER.  A menu
        box is presented at the top of the screen with about 18 verbs.  If
        you click on the verb 'DRAW' with the mouse, the NOUN menu is
        brought up, and then the modifier menu.  For example, you might
        perform...

        DRAW             --> verb
          LINE           --> noun
           PARALLEL      --> modifier

        at which piont you'd make some inputs as to reference entities or
        coordinate location.

        For someone (like me) who has used UniGraphics for about seven
        years, the VERB-NOUN method was a bit bizzare at first, but with a
        little practice you can move fairly quickly.

	X-CAD currently only supports 2D drafting and design, but 3D modules
	and IGES support are promised.  The program is written in overlays,
	but the disk access is totally transparent.  Most of the function 
	libraries called from disk are quite small.  It should also make the
	program quite easy to patch.

	I was amazed at the drawing speed and zoom/pan speed this program
	achieves.  There is a sample drawing of an engine block included with
	the disk.  The drawing has over 2,000 entities.  A 'REDRAW DISPLAY'
	takes no more than 2 seconds.  There is no individual drawing of each
	line like with Draw Plus; the picture just 'appears' on the screen all	
	at once.  If you've ever sat in front of a CAD terminal waiting all
	afternoon for the display to refresh, you'll be thrilled by this 
	redraw speed.

	Tranformations also go very quickly (well, I do have a math chip).
	Move/copy and scale on the engine block all took around 30 seconds,
	which is very respectable compared to UniGraphics.

	I'll post more info here as I become more familiar with X-CAD.  I see
	the big problem to be how to get respectable output.  There is no
	PostScript support, although they do provide drivers for all popular 
	plotters.

	Ed.

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Note 3876.3             Draw Package Information Request                  3 of 3
MSBIS::LANDINGHAM "pnet02!rstiles"                   38 lines  28-AUG-1988 19:20
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: decwrl!mejac!gryphon!pnet02!rstiles
Subject: Re: Draw Package Information Request
Posted: 28 Aug 88 16:00:12 GMT
Organization: People-Net [pnet02], Redondo Beach, CA.
 
 
In article <14595@pnet02.amiga/usenet> dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis) writes:
>I've looked at IntroCAD and it won't do half of what I want. X-CAD costs too
>damn much and doesn't do a whole lot more than Draw Plus. What do you want a
>"real" CAD to do, anyway? 3-D? Aegis is just now releasing Modeler-3D, which
 
It looks to me that the ONLY program you really looked at and are using is
Aegis Draw. I own and have used extensively Aegis Draw/Draw+, Dynamic CAD and
XCAD and I can tell you that XCAD is by far the BEST CAD program for the Amiga
and equals or surpasses Autocad in 2D features. By comparison Aegis Draw is
just that, a line drawing program and very slow at that. I had high hopes for
Dynamic CAD but MicroIllusions has completely abandoned it. In a recent issue 
of PC Mag they reviewed and run benchmarks on all the high end CAD programs
for the PC. The benchmarks were done on a 8Mhz PC-AT WITH an 80287 math
coprocessor. There were 12 programs reviewed from $3000-$5800 not counting
prices of options. I run the same benchmarks on a stock Amiga 2000 and XCAD
beat AutoCAD both in speed and 2D features.
 
XCAD is by far the only game in town when it comes to CAD programs for the
Amiga, and if price is what bothers you (which shouldn't be when you compare
it to features/price of PC based CAD programs), Abel supply sells it at $323. 
 
 
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"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"  Mr Spoc
 
Star-Treck  The OLD generation
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