FAQ's
Why do you advocate producing isometric
drawings with CorelDRAW - as opposed to CAD?
Four reasons:
Money - The cost of CorelDRAW plus our Tech Drawing
Tools Add-in are a fraction of the cost for CAD. Another
financial consideration is the training costs for CAD.
Efficiency - I have not done this very
scientifically but, I am able to take the engineering drawings for a
given product and produce an exploded view in a fraction of the time CAD
folks take. In fact, I keep offering to race them and no one takes me up
on the challenge.
Features - CorelDRAW includes a number of
programs you must purchase to complete the CAD solution. They include:
Bitmap Editor, Raster to Vector, Scanning Application, 3D Modeling, and
Import/Export filters for most popular file types.
Versatility - Art that is required in one
format today is rare. CorelDRAW is very powerful in converting file
formats. Publishing to the Internet is a snap including the ability to map
images. With CAD, on the Internet, a special format is required and the
person accessing the file must download a special viewer before they can
even open a file.
Why do so many companies use CAD?
In the eighties CAD was probably the only reasonable way of producing an
isometric drawing on a computer. Over time the installed base of CAD came
to dominate the landscape. With the advent of GUI operating systems and
quality vector drawing programs other solutions became viable. If you were
to perform a thorough analysis today, I doubt anyone would end up choosing
CAD.
Are you putting CAD down?
Absolutely not. CAD applications are incredibly powerful for the design
and manufacture of products. However, you must ask yourself: Is all of that
power needed to produce an illustration that looks like a given widget?
Should you pay for all that power in hardware/software and operator
training?
Why do you keep referring to money?
This is a very competitive business. Sooner or later it comes down to
parts per hour or dollars per part. As business professionals, it is
incumbent on us to provide our customers or employers with the best
quality/productivity/cost equation possible.
CorelDRAW isn’t known for it’s
technical drawing capabilities. Why did you develop isometric drawing
products for this application?
While CorelDRAW put their emphasis in other areas, I found that they left off
amazingly close to an excellent isometric drawing application. That is why
the core code for Tech Drawing Tools takes
less than 100K of hard drive space.
What about 3D?
3D is neat and holds great promise for the future. However, there are some
serious productivity issues that must be addressed if 3D is to succeed for
this type of illustration.
Where is all of this going?
We are in the very early days of the evolution of computers. What
computers and software will be able to perform in ten years
can be debated endlessly. My advice is; find hardware/software solution
that makes you competitive now. Software that gives you the greatest
flexibility to publish in a number of formats is likely to win for the foreseeable
future.
What about compatible file formats?
Actually this question is exactly the reason companies should be choosing
CorelDRAW. Publishing illustrations is all about the flexibility of file
types and CorelDRAW has the most impressive set of import/export filters I
have ever seen. Add to that the fact that Tech Drawing Tools
and the included symbol libraries export flawlessly and you have a
powerful tool set.
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