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From: tomb@hplsla.HP.COM (Tom Bruhns)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Autocad (was OS/2 vs AmigaDOS)
Message-ID: <5160034@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 12 May 89 16:27:36 GMT
References: <15588@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 55

cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich) writes:/  1:15 pm  May 10, 1989 /
>In article <607@corpane.UUCP> sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes:
>>If AutoCAD came
>>to the Amiga, it would blow away any existing CAD software on the Amiga. 
>What about X-Cad and Ultra-cad?  I've heard very good things about them,
>but never seen one.  Are there any amiga cad programs with decent (i.e.
>enter in 3-view) 3D capabilities?  Good autodimensioning?  Good print
>quality?  Intro-cad has nice printing, but misses out on some basic
>stuff, like dimensioning, or fills, or 3D, or good rotation, or ...
>
>						-- Jim
>						   cthulhu@athena.mit.edu
>----------

I'm an XCad owner/user.  I find it to be very good at what it is
supposed to do.  That does _not_ include any 3-D at this time.  It
does autodimensioning, very good printing/plotting.  I have lots of
good things to say about its capabilities, and some bad things to
say about a few areas as well.  I don't want to take up a whole lot
of net bandwidth on it; suffice it to say it is by far the best cad
I have seen on the Amiga, available now, not at some unknown time
in the future.  It is _not_ a freehand drawing program; it is designed
for technical 2-D drafting of all sorts.  It offers very accurate
control of placement of and manipulation of a variety of entities.
It is (from my experience) exceptionally guru-free, and it does almost
everything I've asked it to the way I expected it to (my list of
features that don't work I can count on the fingers of one hand;
for the number of features it has, I am quite satisfied.)  There
is a review of it in the latest Amiga World; I thought that review
was extremely short-sighted.  I had the impression that the reviewer
either made up his mind early on that he wasn't going to like it, or
he was trying to do something with it that it never was intended to
do.  I have found such CAD programs take some time to learn at all,
let alone learn to use efficiently, and I don't think he gave it a
chance.  For example, XCad is very fast at screen redraws.  The 
reviewer complained about how long it took to zoom out and back in
at a different place (because of the number of keystrokes/mouse picks,
not because of screen redraw rate).  But I do that _VERY_ quickly
by defining some views and having a custom screen menu to pick them.
The reviewer never got that far...   I do agree with the reviewer
on:  lack of an index in the manual and _very_ poor interface with
the file system.  On almost all his other points, I take mild to
strong exception.

Getting back toward the base note:  I think that the CAD situation
on the Amiga is likely to be similar to that expressed in the
WordPerfect notes.  Amigas have not found their place in business
applications.  What is the incentive for AutoCad to be ported to
Amy?  How many people would buy it, even at 1/2 the PC-edition
price?  I'd guess maybe a few dozen.  If I were the manager responsible
for making the decision to port it to Amy or not, and I were graded
on profitability, I'd run from it, screaming!  

Tom Bruhns
tomb%hplsla@hplabs.hp.com