hb@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Henry Bitter) (08/25/88)
Hi,
I am considering buying the AEGIS "draw plus" package to do some
business graphics (organization charts, simple diagrams, etc). I would
appreciate some comments on "draw plus" from some users. Specifically,
I would like to know if it is worth the money ($150) for what it does.
I have not been able to see the package in operation, only read about it.
If you are a user, please let me know your comments.
If you know of a better package please let me know its name.
Henry Bitter
* Pacific Bell * (415) 823-2836
San Ramon, Calif.
{ }!pacbell!pbhya!hb
If I had a disclaimer I wouldn't give it away !cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (08/26/88)
In article <18651@pbhya.PacBell.COM> hb@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Henry Bitter) writes: >Hi, I am considering buying the AEGIS "draw plus" package to do some >business graphics (organization charts, simple diagrams, etc). I would >appreciate some comments on "draw plus" from some users. For what you want to do IntroCAD is Much better (and half the price). Draw Plus has some powerful features but it is slower than molasses in the cold. I have it and cannot reccomend it to anyone. If you want a "real" cad package look into X-CAD, and for cheap try IntroCAD. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis) (08/27/88)
In article <65771@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >In article <18651@pbhya.PacBell.COM> hb@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Henry Bitter) writes: >>Hi, I am considering buying the AEGIS "draw plus" package to do some >>business graphics (organization charts, simple diagrams, etc). I would >>appreciate some comments on "draw plus" from some users. I'd say Draw Plus is the best of the affordable CAD programs. $500 ($400 mail order) ain't affordable, and that's where the other CAD's are hanging out. I'd rather use MS-DOG than spend that much. (And have you looked at AutoCAD? To get equal features to Draw Plus, you'd have to spend about $1200!) I use Draw Plus for a lot of things; I've measured my apartment and created a floor plan drawing (using the feet/inches option of Units) with furniture outlines and it beats the *#@&%* out of scraps of paper. I've done some pretty complex schematics, and made circuit board master artwork on a plotter. I've entered a few logos, and can plot them out any size. >For what you want to do IntroCAD is Much better (and half the price). Draw >Plus has some powerful features but it is slower than molasses in the cold. >I have it and cannot reccomend it to anyone. If you want a "real" cad >package look into X-CAD, and for cheap try IntroCAD. 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 can read and write Draw Plus drawing files. Net lists? Schematic capture? Nice features, but only if you're designing PC boards, which most people don't. Expensive features, too; the only CAD's I've seen offering them cost >$1000. Speed? Well, Draw Plus does take its time, because it's doing a lot: 1. All (I mean, ALL) the drawing is done using floating-point trigonometric calculations at 6-digit precision. A simple 68000 running at <8MC is gonna eat it big doing that, even though the blitter is used for actual rendering. 2. Circles are drawn as 72-sided regular polygons. You get to calculate these twice; once to find the vertices, again to draw the lines. 3. Text is drawn, not bitmapped. The character definitions are obtained from a file (Stroke.font) and stored in a table. There are reasons for all this, and the biggest one is QUALITY. Draw Plus draws EXACTLY what you tell it to, every time, no excuses. I have used Draw Plus to make circuit board artwork, with excellent results. Using a Hewlett- Packard 7580B plotter, the accuracy and repeatability errors were too small to measure with my (admittedly limited) instruments. I am currently working on some multi-layer boards; I expect no problems. There are ways to avoid the worst effects of the slow rendering by removing the causes. For example, a 72-sided polygon is overkill for most circles. I have written a program that will calculate a regular polygon of specified radius and number of vertices and output it in Draw Plus PART file format. One of these days I'm going to finish up the user interface (which is currently useable for hackers but hell for users) and post it to the net. Drawing an 8- or 12-sided polygon takes almost no time. Draw Plus supports 250 layers; I generally consolidate the time-consuming objects on a few layers and don't display them when they're not needed. Taking the PCB artwork as an example, the IC and connector pads tend to be both slow and numerous. To speed up development, I put the actual pads on an undisplayed layer and work with slightly undersized rectangular outlines. This also makes the drawing appear less cluttered, and easier to work with. IntroCAD does not support layers. To me, useless. -- Isn't it interesting how, the more Intel "enhances" the 80x86, the more it looks like a 68000? Here's to Motorola for getting it right the first time! -- Dave Lewis Loral Instrumentation San Diego (619) 282-3341 ihnp4 --\ bang --\ kontron -\ hp-sdd --\ calmasd ->-> crash ->--> loral!dml sdcrdcf -->--------> sdcsvax -/ (uucp)
rstiles@pnet02.cts.com (Rick Stiles) (08/28/88)
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. ================================================================ "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" Mr Spoc Star-Treck The OLD generation ================================================================ UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!rstiles INET: rstiles@pnet02.cts.com
dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis) (08/30/88)
In article <6006@gryphon.CTS.COM> rstiles@pnet02.cts.com (Rick Stiles) writes: >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 And I repeat, what does X-CAD do that Aegis Draw + doesn't? Faster drawing is not enough. >I had high hopes for Dynamic CAD but MicroIllusions has completely abandoned Yeah, I tried Dynamic at the dealer, couldn't get it to even draw a line. Hopeless user interface, no-see-um color combination that COULDN'T BE CHANGED by the user (dark gray background, invisible magenta lines), useless manual. Lots of great hype in their ads, though. -- Segments are for worms! -- and most worms have more than 16 segments. -- Dave Lewis Loral Instrumentation San Diego (619) 282-3341 ihnp4 --\ bang --\ kontron -\ hp-sdd --\ calmasd ->-> crash ->--> loral!dml sdcrdcf -->--------> sdcsvax -/ (uucp)
rstiles@pnet02.cts.com (Rick Stiles) (09/01/88)
In article <14706@pnet02.amiga/usenet> dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis) writes: >In article <6006@gryphon.CTS.COM> rstiles@pnet02.cts.com (Rick Stiles) writes: >>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.... >> >And I repeat, what does X-CAD do that Aegis Draw + doesn't? Faster drawing is >not enough. As always if its good for you, then fine. But if you ever have the time, visit a friend or your friendly local dealer and play with XCAD a little. I think you will enjoy the surprise of playing with a very powerful CAD system. If you ever played with MEDUSA on a Prime super-mini then you will find XCAD very easy and familiar to use. Ok, lets see about features: Graphical & Keyboard entry of Entity position Rectangular coordinates Absolute, Relative Polar coordinates Absolute, Relative Incremental coordinates Incremental Radius Incremental Angle Grid Snapping GRIDON, GRIDOFF Free-Hand Locations Orthogonal Locks X, Y, XY, LOCKOFF Arrays Reference location Change and automatic UNIT conversion. mm,cm,m,km,in,ft,ml Point-on-entity locations END - snap to the end-point or vertice of an entity ORG - snap to origin point of an entity MID - snap to the mid-point of an entity NEAR - snap to the nearest point of an entity INTOF - snap to the intersection of two entities. Intersection could be any combination of cpoints, lines, strings, polygons, arcs, ellipses etc. There are about 20 more and you can use any combination of these to define your points. Also you can zoom in/out, generate, include/exclude entities *while* you are defining your points and so on... Verify entity, Measure Angle, Measure Area, Measure Distance. Edit commands: Break (Intersection, Against), Trim (Intersection, Against Length), Stretch, Delete, Exclude, Include, Move (Copy, to ActiveLayer, to ActiveDepth), Rotate (Copy, Angle, Ntimes, no text rotate), Scale (Copy, no text scale, no dimension scale), Mirror (Copy, no text mirror), Stretch Window.... All entity position command can be used for point id. Inter-Family Relationships, Family Immediate Parents Equals Children All Viewports within a sheet. Makes real size projects for A-E size plotters easy. Multiple viewports at *any* unit sizes are allowed. User defined xhatch/patterns/fonts. Fonts can be outlined, filled, patternfilled, colorfilled, slant, proportional, uniform, left/center/right justify, angled, aligned and so on..... All or any of the above. Associative dimensioning. Dimensioning - Horizontal, vertical, linear, point, angular, diametric, radial line terminators user-definable, leaders, precision, prefix, suffix, decimal, imperial, fractions, fixed, fonts, aligned ....... options too numerous to list. You get the picture. Numerous zoom and pan options, a user menu design interface, scripts, and journal files. Intersection cleanup, and chamfer are easy and accurate. Entity TYPES: CPOINT, LINE, STRING, CIRCLE, ARC, FILLET, ELLIPSE, SPLINE, POLYGON, XHATCH, TEXT, TNODE, DIMENSION, SYMBOL Line Automatic polygon closing Automatic continuation of line command Variable thickness, style, hardfont, softfont, depth, layer, length Perpendicular, Angle, Tangential, Parallel, Rectangle Arc Draw arc with variable Hardfont (style/thickness), Softfont (options too many to list) Draw arc (options:) Parallel, specify radius, specify start angle, specify end angle.............. ............... I think am taking too much net bandwidth so I'll ended here saying that they support graphics tablets, and since it all comes down to you "are as good as your output" , XCAD has rasterizers for Laserjets at 300dpi Xerox, Epsons, G500 thermal transfer printer, Kyocera laser (I guess a European printer), HPGL, Houston Inst, and Roland plotters or you can use any of the preference printer drivers. All in all a program that is worth getting an Amiga for. From what I hear *RUMOR MODE ON* it will even get a face lift with 3D support, a macro language, a drop of the dongle and who knows what else. *RUMOR MODE OFF* I use Xcad for schematic capture, PCB design, floor plan layout for my wife and I have also did the blue prints of a plastic case for a IBM PC manufacturer add on. With *all* CAD programs you can get work done. It makes a difference if you can do it in an hour or in 3 days. High productivity is first on my list. For example, I started looking for a CAD program because I wanted to design a PCB. (For those reading all these, Pro-Net and Pro-Board may serve your needs better if all you want is schematic capture and PCB layout *and* you have $1000 to spend.) It took 3 weeks to do it with Aegis draw+ and a not so accurate output, about 3 weeks and a lot of hair pulling with Dynamic CAD, and only *2.5* days with XCAD and a *VERY ACCURATE* output in that. XCAD allowed me to define my pads and eventually my 16/14/28 and 24 dip symbols at a small enough grid that Draw+ and Dynamic CAD couldn't handle. The keyboard/graphic command interface increases productivity tenfold. Time to learn the CAD programs is *not* included. I don't know but after writing this message I came out with the feeling that there is *no* comparison between Draw+ and XCAD. Its like comparing Generic CAD with AutoCAD. Disclaimer: I have no connection with Taurus, I'm just a satisfied customer. =================================================================== "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" Mr. Spoc Star Trek - The OLD generation =================================================================== UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!rstiles INET: rstiles@pnet02.cts.com
thad@cup.portal.com (09/03/88)
Rick, Have you verified X-CAD operation on a 68020 or 68030 equipped Amiga? Reason I ask is that X-CAD is DONGLE-PROTECTED (boo, hiss) and there's been some discussion recently of CPU-speed-dependent dongles. I've gotten weary of buying software that doesn't function on *ALL* Amigas. If anyone wants a list of stuff that I've verified doesn't function on an 020 or 030 equipped Amiga, lemme know. I haven't found much sensitity to a 68010; most of the 020/030 problems are due to self-modifying code. Thad Floryan [thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad]
rstiles@pnet02.cts.com (Rick Stiles) (09/04/88)
>Reason I ask is that X-CAD is DONGLE-PROTECTED (boo, hiss) and there's >been some discussion recently of CPU-speed-dependent dongles. You are absolutely right Thad. The company *is* aware of the problem and they said (at least to this guy) that they will be dropping the dongle and copy protection in general for the next release. I have been complaining to them since day one. I hate copy protection and double hate copy protection that is CPU speed dependent (iiiik), but if I had to do it over again, I still would have bought XCAD. Its an incredibly powerful program and reminds me of my college days with Prime and Medusa. Productivity software should not be copy protected and SHOULD NOT BE PIRATED, which is true for all software. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Lewis says "Real CAD programs don't have dongles" Copy Protected?? RoboCAD 2D - $2000 - NO FastCAD 2D - $2295 - NO CADvance 2.5D- $2795 - YES AutoCAD 2.5D- $2850 - NO<-- PC Magazine Editor's choice MicroStation 3D - $2995 - YES VersaCAD 3D - $2995 - YES CADkey 3D - $3195 - YES<-- PC Magazine Editor's choice DataCAD 2D - $3195 - YES Arris 3D - $3850 - YES CADmax 3D - $3950 - YES DrawBase 3D - $4995 - YES Personal 3D - $5800 - YES Designer All of the YES above *do* have dongles (little gadgets that plug into the printer port) and are all *REAL CAD PROGRAMS*. Dongles never stopped me from using the best software around especially from a company that is willing to listen. By the way, TAURUS in all their adds and the package itself does say: "NO DONGLE OPTION". --------------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP: {ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!rstiles INET: rstiles@pnet02.cts.com