Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!sun!stpeter!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis@stpeter.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga questions
Message-ID: <132972@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 15 Mar 90 17:21:31 GMT
References: <02550.AA02550@americ.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
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Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
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Let me add a qualified endorsement of X-Cad designer. Its biggest feature
is its refresh speed. (I say qualified not because I am, but because this
endorsement comes with some caveats) 

When I first saw X-Cad (on one of the first FlickerFixer boards) I was 
really impressed. The demo was zooming around a very complex drawing of
an engine with speed that would make Aegis's Draw Plus faint. Of course
it was $600 and really wanted a FlickerFixer (another $900 when you 
included the monitor). Which exceeded my "cheap CAD" budget. So I stuck
with Draw Plus, and later Draw 2000 which apparently I was sent on the
same day Aegis was closing their warehouse. Plus the Aegis programs
are not copy protected (yeah!) and that stupid dongle just really bothered
me. So Haitex said they were going to become the US representative for
X-CAD and they would drop copy protection, etc, etc. Well it never 
happened, and of course Haitex seems to be Tango Uniform as well.

So when X-CAD designer came out I kept trying to figure out what it
*didn't* do that X-CAD did since it was so much cheaper and even to
this day can't say what that is. I do know that X-Cad Professional or
something is also out and a simple diff of the feature list is not
to revealing. 

I sat down and learned X-Cad in about 3 hours of hacking with it and
the tutorial and found it to be klunky at first but more useful as
I got along with it. (Sorta like TECO but not as powerful) It seemed
to meet my needs for an inexpensive way to do CAD. Also using the PLT:
device for check plots is the way to go. That makes its output much
better than Draw Plus' on dot matrix printers. 

Summary : It is a decent package and doesn't crash. The interface is 
	klunky and definitely has a european "twist" to it but once
	you get the mindset it makes more sense. After you are comfortable
	with the command line interface you will find less use for the
	mouse.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  Internet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"If it didn't have bones in it, it wouldn't be crunchy now would it?!"