Yani in building mode... he *** at drawing and as accuracy goes he needs a computer. A pencil snapper that can't draw a straight line. Lucky for the tools, like a laser level.
A router "look at those oh so cute joins"
So I did a month of homework and found a few things that are interesting and curious.
https://www.mozaiksoftware.com/
Every wonder how these kitchen companies do the software? Do they draw it up on Autocad from home grown templates?
NUP the whole thing is a package from shop front to shop back.
"Exports to Paperless Shop" It is a parts list but I suspect it includes billing components.
https://kcdsoftware.com/doors-plus/
If doors and drawers are your company’s specialty, KCD Software’s Doors Plus is a stand-alone, template design software to communicate with your nested based CNC router.
Hundreds of templates are included in the software like doors, drawer fronts and dovetail drawer boxes. It’s also easy to create your own one-of-a-kind custom templates. Parametric tool paths can be assigned for your multiple tool operations. Create your own custom libraries for doors, drawers, wine racks, fluted pilasters, valances and more for traditional and CNC manufacturing.
Doors Plus includes over 300 ready-to-use custom component templates. The order-entry system makes it easy to enter your custom items and modify details on the fly. Doors Plus gives you more custom product capacity, flexibility and efficiency than ever before.
What's interesting is the narrow vertical market and the end to end nature of the software.
Sign manufacture has moved that direction about a decade ago. Hand held computer guided gear you just need an SVG file and a printer.
Computer aided routing tables have been used in sign companies for over 30 years. Our company started using them in the late 1980's. We recently bought a new 5' X 10' Multicam table. Full service custom sign companies still have to design lots of items from scratch and fabricate at least some of what they build in-house. I do not feed our routing tables clip art merely grabbed from some library of pre-fab sign designs. The only things I get to re-use are standardized signs for a company with multiple or many locations. I'll also re-use and modify items like electrical section detail drawings of things like channel letters when a city's sign code require those kinds of drawings to get an installation permit.
Some bottom feeder sign companies will hire anyone with a pulse to try to do design work. But to productive or actually good at the job sign design does require some real artistic talent and design sensibility, not to mention a grasp of geometry. A clip art library of pre-fab signs isn't going to bail out someone with no talent.
Wholesale companies who manufacture items like aluminum extrusion cabinets have their own semi-automated setups to mass produce parts. They'll have libraries of computer files they re-use like the templates Yani mentioned in his post.
As for hand-held devices, none are replacing full fledged PCs any time soon. I do own and use an iPad Pro (with an Apple Pencil), but it is a niche device to supplement design work. It's great for on-screen drawing tasks, but it falls short as a full-blown computer. Our routing tables, digital printers and channel letter return machine are all connected to regular desktop PCs. It may be technically possible to drive those things using a portable tablet or even a smart phone. However, that invites the user to leave the routing table unattended, which really isn't a good idea. S*** happens.
I'm talking about hand held computer driven cutters. It's really decent technology, my wood worker vendor wanted to cut numbers and other decorations for a clock project, I'll dig up some images. I cleaned up the art just like would have been needed for a CNC.
The SVG export gets entered into software that prints out a print to follow that you tape to the media, the device has a screen you follow. It indicates direction changes needed.
We cut numbers, decorations and even the gears for the clock works. All from a $500 device and a little file prep knowledge.
I've had contour cuts done for broken sign faces cut with it, great new technology.
I think Bobby miss3ed the point completely.
"As for hand-held devices, none are replacing full fledged PCs any time soon."
I get it because I've seen them before.
Computer driven hand held router... it's a pretty hard thing to imagine if you haven't seen it before.
https://youtu.be/HBzPs0CRyfU
This dude is inspirational. A retired architect gone work-worker. He did buy a CNC but his first large CNC he made from scratch. Bit of redefinition, what was once a series of specialties as "maker".
https://www.youtube.com/c/frankhowarth
Then the same level of expertise but with metal, this dude. No router he uses a water jet cutter.
https://www.youtube.com/c/FireballTool
You can see in this that someone in Corel got it with Corel CAD. It's not an architect's tool but a maker's tool. There seems to lack the strong connection that other software vendors have managed with toolmakers. It's the tool makers and their products that are key to promoting the software.
Corel have marketing and help teams, I think they should have a 3rd sort of team, relationship manages and user advocates. Dig deep into how to have more pro-motive and supportive relationships with hardware vendors. Corel are pretty much MIA in the marker-sphere on YouTube.
It's YouTube that we all turn to for tutorials. That's where the software recommendations are being listen to.
Neither marketing nor help are in the business of being user advocates and relationship manages. The have their own objectives.
No point in spending money on marketing if the product isn't fit to the market.
So here's me making a software decision... as a newbie, just like I was about to pick Draw for the first time. Near the same rules apply.
I've got the architect using Fusion 360 (in Draw terms Adobe)
The makers using SketchUp (Same engine as CorelCAD)
And me, maybe after 12 months of using many things I might work out what I actually like. I don't have the 12 months for doing that. I'll pretty much have to pick Fusion 360 because of "industry standard" adoption.
Feels a bit like traveling to Interzone to pick a Corel product. "It will be OK, just sniff some more bug powder". Goes to the issue of "industry standard" and actually being it, as opposed to just claiming it. I'd be putting that at the top of the list of all things. Get a handle on what it means and how to be it. Corel could claim "industry standard" in signwriting. They earned that. How was that achieved? Start digging into these other markets using those methods.
There's the means to make the subscription worth $50 a month. Throw in CorelCAD. Most people are unlikely to use it so no skin off Corel's real nose, but it does bring the subscription back to being with the value range of Adobe. CorelCAD could do with the users! It's not in an "out there" place on YouTube.
Corel used to have a team that worked with manufacturers, I was a part of that input way back in version 4 through version 8. I played no part in it but in the version 8 development Corel partnered close with Adobe, sending 4 developers helping them write code and debug drivers for postscript 3, actually having to demonstrate PS 3 printing on Draw at the San Francisco Seybold Graphics show because Illustrator wouldn't print.
I also worked with a team from version 12 through X5 on what became the new color management engine in X5.
Those collaborations early on produced export filters that worked in the then new assumed color space digital front end work flows of the day for printing, like Trapwise and Imposition.
Later the color management collaboration in X5 produced a still industry standard process for color managed digital front end work flows. I debuted that engine and work flow at the Graphics of the America's show in Miami as part of the X5 release tour.
This resulted in full color model support for transparency all though it took until, version 2019 to resolve the (what I call) the improperly built complex fills issue in PDF export.
I have seen no production industry focus from Corel since then.
At those times I was writing for Printing Impressions, Sign and Graphics and Print and Graphics magazines as well as running my shop Custom Printers. I was also consulting to Heidelberg on what became the Meta Dimensions and then later on the Printnect work flows. Soon after I was consulting to Mimaki on exportation to the Rasterlynk process for spot colors. As part of those processes I worked with Onyx developing RIP drivers for the pigment ink based archive printers and their collaboration with Zund cutters.
The concept early on besides getting paid was opening the door for PC work stations and RIP servers. While I had no intent the end result of these and most others companies development was an extinction level event for MAC RIP servers and a monumental decrease in the MAC based work station.
I made sure there was a discussion for a path for CorelDRAW export to these devices I consulted for and by the time X5 rolled out CorelDRAW export was second to none for universal industry compliance.
This was as much chance as anything as all of these companies except Heidelberg had settled on developing their workflows on Global Graphics based RIP Engines. Both Heidelberg and Global Graphics had made supporting PC systems a priority and 90% of all RIPS today are based on Global Graphics core templates.
Today the reduction in print companies, the demise of many ad agencies, the increase of one person design and manufacture shops, with the consolidation of interior design with architecture has the vast percentage of graphics being PC based.
My top architectural clients have marketing departments that are huge, 1 is as large as the top 10 ad agencies in my area the other as big as the top 5. All architectural, interior design firms have marketing departments in my experiance all I've seen are PC based.
The point being that Corel let all this progress go and allow Adobe capture a great deal of this work.