CADzooks! What a Deal!

Visio takes serious aim at the 800-pound gorilla of the CAD industry.

Evan Yares

Why is AutoCAD so popular? For 15 years, competitors have asked that question, and none of them seems to have grasped the answer. In my experience, three major factors keep AutoCAD users loyal: an intellectual investment in learning the program, a time investment in customizing the program to do exactly what they need, and a monetary investment in all the drawings they've created.

Many competitors have tried to emulate parts of AutoCAD's command set, customization languages, and DWG file format. But they all started with existing CAD programs, and results were un impressive. In the real world, "almost AutoCAD-compatible" just isn't good enough.

But what if a company started from scratch, building a program so compatible that AutoCAD users and developers would consider it a desirable alternative? Meet Visio's IntelliCAD , which competes head to head with AutoCAD Release 14 but is $3255 less expensive. It's also got a nice, Microsoft Office-style interface.

I'm an experienced AutoCAD user, and working with IntelliCAD gave me an eerie feeling. Sure, it has all the basic commands. But I also tried dozens of the most obscure AutoCAD commands I know and found only a very few that haven't been implemented in IntelliCAD. Visio provides a list of missing AutoCAD functions, most notably associative hatches, 3-D solids, and photorealistic rendering. Importantly, IntelliCAD doesn't mess up things it can't edit. Using IntelliCAD, I edited files created in AutoCAD12, 13, and 14. When I saved those drawings and loaded them into Auto CAD, all the objects IntelliCAD couldn't edit were unchanged.

IntelliCAD is more than an AutoCAD-compatible clone; it adds its own significant features. Drawing Explorer, in one window, gives control over layers, line types, blocks, text, and dimension styles. And IntelliCAD has a multiple-document interface, which AutoCAD lacks.

So, will IntelliCAD be an AutoCAD killer? Probably not, but Visio is a serious competitor and Autodesk knows it. IntelliCAD lacks a few AutoCAD features, but it's a well done, viable, mainstream alternative. If you're looking for an industrial-strength CAD program that works with AutoCAD files but won't break the bank, look here.

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Where to Find

IntelliCAD 1.0........................$495
(Windows 95 or NT; 16 MB of RAM)
Visio Corp.
Seattle, WA
Phone:    206-521-4500
Fax:      206-521-4501
Internet: http://www.visio.com/

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IntelliCAD 1.0 Ratings

Technology	*	*	*	*
Implementation	*	*	*	*	*
Performance	*	*	*	*
Key: ***** Outstanding, **** Very Good , *** Good, ** Fair, * Poor

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Looks and Feels Familiar

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Visio's IntelliCAD will look familiar -- and feel comfortable -- to AutoCAD users.

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Evan Yares teaches and writes about CAD. You can contact him at evan@yares.com .