[net.micro.amiga] Aegis Draw?

gary@cirl.UUCP (Gary Girzon) (10/02/86)

	Has anyone used Aegis Draw, the CAD/drawing program?
If so, I would like to hear your comments on it. Are there any
other "Draw"-like programs on the market? Also, will Aegis draw
support the Laserwritter (or for that matter, any printer driver
in preferences?) or does one need a plotter? 

	Please post any comments, reviews, etc., or send email and
I will summarize on the net.
			
				Gary Girzon


UUCP: ...{ihnp4,harvard}!think!cirl!gary

elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) (10/08/86)

In article <287@cirl.UUCP> gary@cirl.UUCP writes:
>
>	Has anyone used Aegis Draw, the CAD/drawing program?
>If so, I would like to hear your comments on it. Are there any
>other "Draw"-like programs on the market? Also, will Aegis draw
>support the Laserwritter (or for that matter, any printer driver
>in preferences?) or does one need a plotter? 

>UUCP: ...{ihnp4,harvard}!think!cirl!gary

Aegis Draw uses the printer driver in preferences. I don't know if
they supply a Laserwriter driver, but I suspect that they do. It seems
to be a servicable two-dimensional drafting program, but it also seems
as if it could use a math coprocessor real bad -- an engineer said
it's not as slow as his drafting program on his  PC-Drone, but it
still takes about 15-30 seconds to redraw the screen.

What the world really needs is a good three-dimensional CAD package...
my local dealer could have sold an Amiga to a local geologist, if he'd
only had one (this geologist was writing a textbook, and wanted to
show cutaways at various angles).

Disclaimer: This is all based on a couple of hours doodling, if an
expert says different, believe him.
-- 

      Eric Green {akgua,ut-sally}!usl!elg
        (Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509)

" In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
 people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

bliv@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU (Jim "Bliv" Haleblian) (10/13/86)

--- Take that, Line Eater!  AAaaaarrg (munch)

	Having used Aegis Draw for a couple of small projects, I've
noticed that it leaves much to be desired in the printer support category.
My first complaint is that it prints the entire window of the plot.  My second
complaint is that, well, it doesn't *exactly* print the window either.  It
turns out that if I move the window up so that the window's title bar overlaps
the screen's menu/title bar, Aegis won't print it any more.  It also (thank the
lord) won't print the borders on the sides (but it will print the bottom,
sometimes, if you don't change the print parameters properly).  In fact, if you
don't change the parameters properly, sometimes your printout is missing
several lines from the bottom of the drawing.

	This is a paragon of consistency.

	It's real easy to use (at least to somebody who hasn't used any CAD
before), but I still wish it could switch into interlace mode (Dynamic CAD
uses interlace, but the beta copy I saw couldn't go into 320x200 mode[!]).

	Supposedly, Aegis is coming out with an update soon, but the update
apparently won't be taking care of the printer problems...I should probably
mention, too, that you can't adjust the size of the output or the resolution
of the printing, all you can adjust is the last pixel on the right and the
bottom that the printer will print.

	AEGIS, can we please have a decent print drawing function?

					Jim Haleblian
					mit-eddie!bliv

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This drivel should and is considered to be the opinions of the author,
not necessarily any one else's.....
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wagner@utcs.UUCP (10/16/86)

I wrote a little program to take AEGIS DRAW drawplot files and do a decent
job of printing them on my printer.  It is printer-specific currently
(I have an IBM-PC Graphics Printer, but it should work on any epson-style
printer).  I did some thinking about how to generalize it to use the
AMIGA printer drivers, but couldn't find a good solution.  I just rasterize
the whole image myself.  It's written in C and fairly fast (the original was
in BASIC, and took 20 minutes!).  If anyone is interested, I can post it.
(but it won't be for a week or 2, because I'm just about to leave on 
vacation)

Michael Wagner (wagner@utcs)