upFront.eZine Issue #842
by Ralph Grabowski
The 1998 release of IntelliCAD by Visio Corp represented the first significant attack against AutoCAD's sovereignty. It was lead by a former AutoCAD product manager, who had the resources of a billion-dollar corporation to assist him in marketing the first serious AutoCAD clone, at 10% the price.
Pure, Trust, Real
Autodesk counter attacked with software (its own Visio software clone, Actrix) and with marketing through the "100% Pure DWG" label it attached to AutoCAD LT. Never mind that LT of the time did not properly display all AutoCAD objects; Autodesk's objective was to instill doubt in the minds of those considering straying from the fold.
By 2000, IntelliCAD ended up being a bust for Visio Corp, but its offspring -- IntelliCAD Technical Consortium and OpenDWG Alliance (as it was then known) -- spawned a host of AutoCAD workalikes that weren't paying API licensing fees to Autodesk. The company reacted by implementing TrustedDWG (to expose drawings that were saved by workalikes) and RealDWG, their DWG read-write APIs that countered the workalike APIs from Open Design Alliance. http://www.autodesk.com/products/dwg
AutoCAD 360
Which brings us to 2015 and Autodesk's dash to all-things cloud. AutoCAD 360 is the cloud version of AutoCAD, based originally on Flash technology that an Israeli firm had adapted for viewing maps. Since the acquisition, Autodesk is credited with being the most aggressive of all software vendors to get a CAD program to run on any platform. There are now free versions of AutoCAD 360 specific to Android, iOS, OS X, "any" Web browser (IOW, for just about any hardware platform and recent Web browser), and now Windows 8. https://www.autocad360.com
AutoCAD 360 is different from AutoCAD. Now, we would expect the user interface to be different (less cluttered than AutoCAD, say, and more finger friendly), and we'd expect the feature set of a free program to be slimmed down. But what we wouldn't expect is to see DWG files displayed incorrectly by something carrying the "AutoCAD" label -- especially not after more than a decade's worth of reassurance marketing (plus multiple law suits) reminding us that only DWG from Autodesk is pure, trustworthy, and the real one.
AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8
After Autodesk this month announced AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8, I downloaded and installed it immediately, because it is one the first CAD systems written specifically for the touch-oriented, tiled, Metro, Modern interface of Windows 8. http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-ca/app/autocad-360/095a823e-3111-4507-bde9-6ac7feeb2a1e
(You can read my initial comments about the software at WorldCAD Access, http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/01/ten-things-to-know-about-autocad-360-for-windows-8.html.)
As I opened drawings in it, I noticed that it seemed to have difficulty with certain aspects of them, and so I ran it through my suite of files that test for DWG display compatibility. The preliminary and incomplete results are listed below. Puzzled, I compared it with some other platforms of AutoCAD 360: they performed better than the Windows 8 version, but still not as perfectly as desktop AutoCAD.
Let's take a look at what the tests revealed.
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Budweiser-Tested
From my own inital tests, I found the following problems:
- Constraints are not displayed
- Draw order is ignored
- Dynamic blocks are displayed, but do not operate
- Fill is turned off for wide polylines, donuts, and TrueType text
- Generated drawings (from 3D models) are not displayed
- Hatch pattern "solid" fill is displayed incorrectly
- Under and overscores drawn incorrectly using %% metacharacters
- Vertical text is drawn horizontally
- Problems displaying attribute text
- Section objects not displayed
- Solids (2D) and traces are displayed wrong
- Xrefs not displayed in some cases
- 3D meshes (old style) are displayed with errors
Then I turned to an external source. CAD Studio is famous for its massive AutoCAD tips database, as well as its Budweiser test drawing that checks for DWG-file compatibility. (See Figure 1.) Their test drawing performs tests that are different from my suite. http://www.cadstudio.cz/budweiser
Figure 1: Budweiser2010.dwg displayed by AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8
It did not begin well. The 2013 version of the test did not load properly: the zoom extents showed a small red dot.
I switched to the 2010 version, and found that Budweiser reported the following problems:
Test Issue
2 Layer 99 is not faded
3 Tolerance not displayed (see figure 2)
4 Symbol is not displayed correctly
6 Incorrect hatch pattern
7 TrueType fonts not filled;
identity symbols display incorrectly
9 Symbol does not look the same
10 OLE object missing
11 Dimension text not boxed
13 Point style not displayed correctly
14 Backwards text not displayed;
text not located correctly
15 Clipping ineffective
16 Clipping ineffective
20 Circular gradient not displayed
22 Column text displayed incorrectly
24 3D mesh displayed incorrectly
25 Parametric block displayed incorrectly
26 Symbols not displayed
27 Field text not updated
Figure 2: Close-up of display error for test #3
To compare the AutoCAD 360 results with a workalike, I opened Budweiser in BricsCAD V15 for Windows. It opened the 2013 version of the test drawing corectly, and while it did not display everything correctly, the workalike made fewer display errors than AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8.
Expert Opinion
I asked experts in the field to give me their ideas as to why AutoCAD 360 did not display some aspects of DWG files correctly. (To keep a low profile on the issue, they asked me to not identify them.)
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Expert 1: Regarding AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8, I don't have firsthand knowledge of the issues, but I speculate they are using a modified -- or even new -- code base for this app to reduce the size and complexity of the application. The size of the Windows 8 app is listed as 5.7MB. Regular AutoCAD is huge in comparison; on Windows 64, their acdb19.dll is 26MB alone, and they install numerous other large components.
The incorrect rendering you are seeing is probably due to them using this new and modified code base, which has not been thoroughly tested. It looks like some of the bug lists [for a new CAD program] I saw a number of years ago. It takes considerable time and effort to accurately render the contents of a DWG file using a new code base.
Missing functionality could be an attempt to reduce the application's size, or it could be that they haven't had the time to rewrite and streamline some of the modules. Dynamic blocks, constraints, and sections all are complex areas that require considerable code to support.
- - -
Expert 2: I have played around with AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8 as well. It seems to be based on the same code base as the other mobile versions (Android and iOS). Based on your observations, I think it shares only a little code with the desktop version, and so should probably treated like other [non-Autodesk] CAD editors that happen to read and write DWG. This approach makes sense if your goal is to create a new mobile-first application; reimplementing all DWG features is not trivial, nor fast.
In the end, it comes down to what people use the apps for. If their goals are to create simple geometry and export to DWG, then AutoCAD 360 and other apps will do a fine job. Depth of compatibility with AutoCAD might not be relevant for large parts of the market.
It will be curious to see in what direction Autodesk develops its non-desktop products, and if they will ever have the ambition to make them as powerful as the desktop version.
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When I asked CAD Studio about the AutoCAD 360 result from their Budweiser test, a company spokesman said they had reported the problems to Autodesk.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
As CAD Studio says on its Web site, "...passing only n% of the tests -- n% compatibility -- is barely something you want to depend on when processing your valuable design data." They are referring to non-Autodesk AutoCAD-workalike programs, and so it must come as quite a surprise that the statement could be applied closer to home.
Autodesk got away with mocking workalikes when its DWG software was based solely on AutoCAD. But then the company moved away from using AutoCAD as its all-encompassing platform, and so it ran into trouble. First, there were the difficulties in getting DWG file exchange to work properly with the likes of Inventor and Revit (this took years to get to a reasonable level), and now with 360.
Autodesk promotes AutoCAD 360 for Windows 8 as "a free, easy-to-use drawing and drafting mobile app that allows you to view, edit, and share AutoCAD drawings." But it cannot, unhappily, be relied on to display drawings created in desktop AutoCAD with 100% fidelity.
And One More Thing...
IntegrityWare updates Power Surfacing 2.0 plug-in for SolidWorks with constraints, tangents to NURBS surfaces and solids, parametric sub-d dlements, curvature display and analysis, level of detail editing, and support for the 2015 version of SolidWorks .
The plug-in adds organic and free-form modeling to the history-based Solidworks MCAD program through subdivision surface modeling that is integrated with NURBS models. Solidworks commands can be applied to Power Surfacing models. http://npowersoftware.com/pressreleases/pressreleasePowerSurfacing20.html
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- Jon Page
- Mary Fugier, Robert McNeel & Assoc
- Leo Schlosberg, Cary Concrete Products
Letters to the Editor
Unfortunately your recollection of the origins of Mechanical Desktop are incorrect. It was developed internally using the new ObjectARX environment on top of AutoCAD, and was a desktop "mashup" of AutoSurf, Designer, and newly developed assembly and drawing managers. A later acquisition of Genius GmbH added design accelerators (calculations) and advanced drawing production commands.
- Roger Mollon, senior director of software development, design, lifecycle, & simulation product group
Autodesk
Thanx for another informative and thoughtful e-news!
- Cadman 777
Enjoy your articles here in the Deep South. Can you tell me if AutoCAD is included with Inventor? Figured you would know, and I didn't want to fool with 'cloud' sales people. Would like to get a seat, but Autodesk's obsession with the cloud worries me.
- Tim Neumann, project engineer
The editor replies: "Inventor and Inventor Professional do not include AutoCAD. Only the suites do."
Thanks again for all your newsletters.
- Rudolf Kriens
Thanks for the good reads over the years.
- Pete Shatzko
Spin Doctor of the Moment
"4K UHD [ultra high definition tv] is the future, and the future is now."
- Gary Shapiro, president, CEA [Consumer Electronics Association]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/12/4_big_right_now_but_will_not_save_tv/
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