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.
The only adds I see are on precision shooting sites or some photography sites and I skip them.
The home shopping channel I only see when I'm at the VA, my God we need that thing to disappear!
Exactly
So anyway... I'm using SketchUp, pressing F2, F3... things that were perfect are suddenly split. "I better have a look at Corel CAD, I'm sure that must be a more familiar environment than this".
Does it have some familiar Corel Drawish qualities? Did I feel at home?
At $699 U.S. per license to get a usable version of the software is a bit steep for 3D modeling but it is with what it is.
I'm fairly sure Corel CAD is up there too.
I just checked CAD 8s $699.
SketchUp is $299USD.
Like I said, I can't be seen as a judge on this as I just don't normal touch 3D with a barge pole!
I can see what they were thinking from the promotional videos. Using Draw to create shapes that are messy to define in AutoCad.
Might have even been a major client making a special request.
Unfortunately, I think it misses the boat on any "take Draw users to 3D" level. SketchUp, I felt annoyed that I didn't know how to do basic things. CorelCAD, I felt totally out of my depth and couldn't even find a familiar friend in a pick tool.
Definitely SketchUp is more like Draw than CorelCAD. Both use the same engine.
There are versions of limited Sketchup for less money but the full versions are $699 for a few seats. I have a few clients that have moved all their conceptual drawing there. The one has 10 seats the other 15, I'll have to ask what the enterprise rates are.
Believe me you don't want the limited versions you get screwed on features like limited versions of everything else.
I double checked first all prices are subscription per year no other offer, $129, $299 and $699 Sketchup is salty.
These faces and lines that drop off everywhere... it was a format designed to run on a 286 computer. It would be interesting to have a program that worked in 'vectors', not silly lines.
We forget how spoiled we are by software that has had 30 years of development.
It's a bit rough, no hints to quick keys in tool menus, Some times very difficult to get an object to sit on another in 3D space. Things break from interactions and need careful grouping and component construction...
Still I manage this by staying up all night.
I think I started from a blank sheet 7 times.
Rhino might be a possibility if conceptual is a requirement, https://www.rhino3d.com/ it's $995 + $495 for the additional plugin.
Good stuff.
In the end, the big opportunities are in workflow. You can't just throw CAD at Draw and call that workflow. There are way more opportunities in this for Corel than people think. Corel need to re-imagine workflow. They have good code, albeit a bit ordinary, but they are using a workflow model from Windows 3.1.
That's where following the Adobe model is going to royally # Corel. That's the Win 3.1 model of applications, apps work but they are poorly linked.
Corel need to go back to basics are review the model of what an app is then work out historic errors. One of those errors is putting bitmap stuff in Draw while have a poor relationship to PP. It just adds to the confusion of the interface for very little gain. The energy should have, easy in retrospect, gone into complete integration of PP into Draw and not pulling in some features.
In place of that, a simple tab that opened whatever bitmap you point to in Draw in a full featured image editor within Draw.
It "feels like" they should have given parts of the Draw engine 3D capabilities, a new code base, then spat out CAD files rather than using AutoCAD logic of dots and points.