12 Aug 2003

Drawing figures

p. I've been on another 'perfect software' quest over the past few months. I often have to draw diagrams of my apparatus and so forth, but so far, I haven't yet managed to find a package which does exactly what I want. Most of my diagrams are greyscale (for journals which are too cheap to publish colour figures), and they usually need to be to scale with dimensions marked on. Of course, almost any decent vector editor would allow you do all of this manually, but--["again":http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000395.html]--why should I have to laboriously measure and convert the dimensions in the diagram, when I could have a tool to do it for me? p. The problem seems to be that there are two main kinds of drawing software: 'artistic' vector editors (Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw etc.) and CAD programs (MacDraft, HighDesign etc.). The artistic ones tend to be fairly easy to use, but there aren't any dimensioning or scaling utilities, and tasks like drawing parallel lines which intersect with other parallel lines are more difficult than they should be. The CAD software seems to take years to learn how to use and is *really* expensive. What I want is something in between, which is cheap and easy to use. Is there something I've missed?

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    I have heard good things about ConceptDraw (http://www.conceptdraw.com) which appears to be the equivalent of Visio under Windows. I have no experiences with it but they have a demo you can download. I believe the academic license is quite affordable.----- Have you looked at OmniGraffle? I don't think it will have all the features you want but if you haven't seen it, it's probably worth a look.

    by Richard @ 12/08/2003 10:08 pm • Permalink

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    Hi again. I appreciate your problem. I’ve always ended up using Illustrator and doing things by hand - at least you get exactly what you want, even if it seems that the machine should be doing the drudge work for you. Illy’s now scriptable, so there is some scope at least for automation. It also has smart cursors, but no support for scaled drawing or dimensions, I think. A quick look on HyperJeff suggests: RealCADD - RealBasic $75 QCad - Open Source PowerCADD - commercial $800! Graphite - high-end $995! I love powerful yet easy-to-use programs. Why aren’t there more! grin

    by pete @ 13/08/2003 9:08 am • Permalink

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    Werner: I've heard of ConceptDraw, but I've never tried it, so I'll give it a go. Richard: I have OmniGraffle, and love it. I find it much quicker and easier to use than Illustrator (we have a site licence for it at work, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the money on it), but it doesn't have scaling/dimensioning tools. If it did, it would be perfect wink pete: Thanks for the suggestions--I'll check out the cheaper options from the list you gave, and see if they do what I want.

    by bsag @ 13/08/2003 6:08 pm • Permalink

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    For some reason I didn't find CADintosh then, but I found it on the MacWorld cover CD. It's from Lemkesoft, looks good value.

    by pete @ 26/08/2003 9:08 am • Permalink

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    I am an engineer and use an application called MacBRAVO!, this is an extensive Modeling and 2D Detail drawing application. This application will do everything you want including automatic dimensing, and is easy to learn. Most moder CAD apps. are overloaded with functions and you cannot see the wood for the trees. There are two problems :-1 it is no longer available, however In view of this I could let you have a copy. :-2 You require a device known as EVE which connects to any connection in your system. This part should still be available in USA. If you are interested let me know. Michael Simpson (from Scotland) -----

    by Michael Simpson @ 20/09/2003 2:09 am • Permalink

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