#CAD
12 messages in this thread
I HAVE JUST BEEN DISSAPPOINTED TO FIND THAT THERE WILL BE NO PRO-DRAW FROM
AEGIS . I AM OUT ON A LIMB INSOFAR AS THE DRAWPLUS PROGRAM FALLS SHORT OF MY
NEEDS AND I JUST INSTALLED THE MICROBOTICS MULTIFUNCTION MODULE WITH THE 6881
FP CO-PROCESSOR. MY QUESTION FOR ANYONE KNOWLEDGEABLE IS 1- IS THERE AN
ARCHITECTURAL CAD [A PROGRAM OUT THERE FOR THE AMIGA 2- IS THERE ONE OUT THERE
WHICH ACCESSES THE 6881 3- DOES ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DCAD VERSION 2.3 OR
THE UPCOMING 2.4 4- SAW THE AMIGA WORLD AD FOR X-DESIGNER DOES ANYONE KNOW
ABOUT THAT ONE.
ANY REPLIES MUCH APPRECIATED
Peter,
Did Aegis tell you directly that Pro-Draw would not be done? I've heard
rumors to that effect, but no confirmation.
I haven't looked at Dynamic CAD for a long time. It wasn't too good when I
first looked at it, and I don't know of anyone who uses it.
I did call up Haitex in Texas about X-Cad, and spoke to a fellow named Alan
Brandenburgh. The program is being written in England, and theoretically will
be finished this year, or maybe early next (never assume the best case in these
matters). He said that it would be shown at Comdex, which is happening around
now.
Some of the features we discussed involve electronic work, so I won't go into
those. Other things he said are:
a) It is a full Amiga development, not a port from another system
(like DCAD is).
b) It will have Draw+ file read capability, though probably not
write capability.
c) You need 2MB to use it, and they strongly recommend a hard disk.
d) It is supposed to be very fast, partly because it is
integer-based. (As I see it, this can be a good thing IF they use
a very large integer range, and present the user interface as
a flexible floating-point format like Aegis Draw does.) He cited
some benchmarks that were run vs. AutoCAD and RoboCAD running on
an AT. He talked about a circle-draw benchmark in which X-CAD
did 12 seconds on a stock A1000, while the IBM AT programs did
around 2 minutes. I'm not sure what that proves by itself, other
than the fact that the Amiga can draw circles fast – but he did
say that other benchmarks were also favorable, and that they were
run by an independent firm.
e) The expected retail price is $599.95, which means that X-CAD had
better be a very good program.
One other thing, Peter – you might try leaving your messages in normal text
style (not all upper-case). If you were typing in lower case, then maybe your
CompuServe user options are set incorrectly – the SYSOPs here can tell you more
about that.
Talk to you later.
Joel
Joel… I'm not sure what comments I should have, here… Looks fine to me.
–Ben–
OK Ben, didn't mean to drag you into anything. I just thought that you might
have some thoughts on the integer vs. floating point way of doing things.
By the way, Ijust got Amazing Computing today, and there is an ad for some
heretofore unheard-of (to me) CAD tools in there. As the amount of Amiga CAD
software increases, do you perceive an overall benefit to yourself (attracting
more and more engineers to the Amiga), or would you prefer to be the only
viable supplier in a small market (no prodding intended here, this is a genuine
question)? Assume for the sake of argument that some of the new software turns
out to actually work, which has yet to be proven.
Joel
First of all, integer vs. FP methods — very viable indeed… 32 bits seems
like a good size (for this machine) to do a CAD system with. That's what
_we're_ using in our architectural system… (RSN… grin) On the new CAD
tools. They look very nice indeed. Of course, I _immediately_ got on the horn
to them and asked about availability and so on, and got a "next week… just
waiting for the manuals" aswer, which is very plausible to me. So we will see
about that. As far as how I feel about them being in the same market, well,
mixed. It's kind of an emotional thing to go from the _only_ entry to one of a
group. Especially when you've been the only one for two years… I feel like a
"pioneer", if you know what I mean. CBM apparently doesn't agree, and treats us
like dirt, but, hey, they treat _everyone_ badly. In a business sense, I'm
pleased. Dynamic CAD was a very poor port of a non-Amiga program with a flimsy
appraoch to PCB work. This new tool looks to me like it's a real approach, and
a serious one at that. Competiton is OK by me… I have a lot of faith in the
skills that I can tap – mine, Waynes, and a couple of other hacker/maniacs.
Also, the more entries there are, the more the machine will be percieved as a
"real" engineering machine. That can only help us. In terms of pure
performance, I don't think that PCLO will be beaten by this new entry, or any
to come after it. And that includes anything written here. Features, sure, you
can add them, but performance, no. We're talking raw speed here. Now, I'll
agree before you even bring it up that a high-performance tool with outdated or
outmoded features isn't worth much to most people, but it's worth something to
me – I'm proud of the program. Paternally. I feel confident that we can address
any challenge that arrives on this machine to some degree… If I'm wrong, OK.
But I can try! Meantime, the best thing that can happen would be for _many_
serious engineering tools to appear on the Amiga. Darwin knows the hardwares
just begging to be used. –Ben–
There will be no product CALLED Draw Pro. There will be new CAD stuff as well
as a 68881 version of Draw Plus (68020/68881 is in testing). We feel that the
name "Draw" has been a problem in the CAD world. We also have announced a 3D
Modeling program called Modeler 3D which will create VideoScape 3D objects and
import data from Draw Plus! Hope that helps.
I think you're correct about the name… I was wondering about that when I
first saw the program. Going to change it? –Ben–
I don't know if we will change the names of existing products. I do know that
any new product WILL have a different name. Draw was a great name in 1985, but
the Amiga's grown quite a bit since then. By the way, I'm thinking of creating
an IFF for structured 2D drawings that uses 32 bit intergers with a single
scaling factor that says something like "In this drawing 1 is equal to .0001
inches". What do you think about this idea?
I think it's an excellent idea… we'll support it if you let us know what the
format is soon enough (already writing files, but we can still change the
types) We would like to see a super-positioning hunk so that an area that is
dimensioned to .001 could be block positioned to .00001, for instance. Lines,
circles, arcs, points, origins, stutter definitions, all the usual good stuff.
–Ben–
Most of the dicussion has gone on in BIX, in the Amiga.dev section.
I will be doing most of the implimentation toward the end of this year. BUT I
can get a spec out quickly.
As to your suggestion for super positioning, I would hope that a 32 bit number
would provide sufficent percision for the purposes. It is a mistake to set "1"
to be the grid-snap number. A good rule with scaled-interger stuff is to set
"1" to be 1/10 to 1/100 of the smallest number the user will ever see.
For example if your doing a PC Board layout, 1 can be set to .00001 inches
which with signed 32 bit values still allows the PC Board to be as large as
21,474
inches (which is 1/3 of a mile). Not bad.
I know — 32 bits is great. I want the super positioning to be a variable
precision, just like the resolution itself. As for your discussion on BIX, too
bad. It's a shame that those anti-amiga _scum_ have managed to monopolize some
of the brightest talent in the Amiga world… at least they stopped printing
all the BAD news in the BIX section of BLIGHT magazine… I'm sure Jerry will
keep telling the world that the Amiga's a dog, though… Meantime, I have (I
think) gotten the output format for DRAW+ to function. At least it can read a
schematic from Scheme now. Soon to come your way for approval or irradiation.
–Ben–
My point was that it's important to have a single scaling factor. Just be
carefull to set it appropiatly for you drawing type. With all the different
floating point standards this system makes sense.
Looking foward to your software.