3D MCAD: Thoughts from an old timer

Finally! a voice of reason. God Bless Dave.

I have been a user of IronCAD since it's eary days ( 1997 ) when it was "3D Eye TriSpectivies". It truly is the most flexible and easy to use 3D CAD package available.

Dave, Your article is pretty good and display your common sense for choosing the "right tool" for the right job so to speak. I also used TriSpective ver. 2.0 and it was fun, but also difficult to sketch and create things precise for the most part back then, after all this years of developments and new releases I suspect the product is more robust, but back then the Drafting was almost useless and parts were disjoined or booleans didn't work like they should, plus sheetmetal didn't exist. I've used about any cad out there and I think in this competitive market for being in the lead companies like the one that owns IronCad need to offer they product cheaper to be in everybody's desks, at least if their names or brand are not easily known or recognized. My advice for them is to sell their product at discounted prices and get in the door of every small business, schools, etc. By the way I visited IronCad website after being told that you could easily download a working demo, but that was not the case. And what is happening to them has also happened to the old Cadkey, one of my first cad tools, poor marketing and not keeping up with market trends(Parametrics, come to mind), Assemblies, Sheetmetal, BOM, etc. My 2 cents, Eddy

Dave, you hit the nail right on the head, but I do we have to have a program that takes away the skills of Design? I did not create any 3D drawings in version 12, but did 50% of a major defense project in 3D with "good old release 14". The process of 3D creation, and my limited timeline, made me think 2 steps ahead, made work a joy, and ultimately shaved many, many months off the project. I am an advocate of AutoCAD, even if it's 3D capabilities are somewhat primitave to other CAD programs around. I have tried others, but have found the learning curve longer than I would consider acceptable. Given one had the time and backing, these programs are great and worth the investment, but are not suitable for a lot of work I do. My revelation came early last year when I teamed up with an Engineer/Designer who had created or adopted countless LISP routines and was working solely with them and keyboard shortcuts. Result - as fast as other parametric programs, if not faster, as exacting in tolerancing and easy to learn and use (one only has to have a "designing" mind). On top of that, all AutoCAD seats could open the drawings, even the models. Clients liked what they saw, as they could be walked through the model, and with a simple LISP routine, 2D "parts" for detailing can be created. I have always had a satisfactory result from the Autodesk product I have used, and at the price I think it is great value. All one needs to achieve is to "think outside the square". My View Richard

Your ariticle hits home but I'm just an old timer with not much experience with MCAD or AEC as of yet. So by starting later I did not suffer through the evolution of software to what it is today. Whether bad or good today, it is the best we have to date. I will always depend on you who have the experience to push for the changes that I will use but don't know I need it as of yet. If that makes sense to you. I know your article made sense to me. Keep at it sir. Great job.

Dave is spot on. As an independent reseller who can offer a variety of different CAD solutions, it is amazing how often it is that the purchasing team specify the product to be bought and then we have to fit what they want to do into it. IronCAD sells well to the independent thinker who is not worried by the lack of presence in the market place. With no marketing spend on the product and a price less than half that of the competitors, it is also difficult for potential end users to get resellers to spend the same amount of time on the sales cycle of product evaluations as they would with another product. Overall, a great product and maybe one of the best kept secrets in the 3D CAD market today.

Amen Dave!!! I have daily access to AutoDesk Inventor 10 & SolidWorks 2005, but my preference for solid modeling is AutoDesk's Mechanical Desktop. I don't want seperate (linked part files). I'm not concerned with parametric features & I don't want constraints. What I want is to be able to be able to work within (1) drawing, without limitations. I've been working with AutoCad since '89, starting with Release 9 on DOS. The funny & misunderstood thing about AutoCAD, repeated to me over & over was that it couldn't do 3D, but I was creating 3D on R12 DOS!!! Mechanical Desktop allows the user to choose whether they want to work in (1) main drawing, like I do, or set it up so individual parts files are assembled in a separate assembly file. That's what I like, a choice! Inventor & SolidWorks don't give you that option.

Hi Scott, FYI- IronCAD works the way you want also. In fact, more dynamically. Just thought I let you know.

Tom, Thanks for the help. I'm going to look at possibly getting a seat of IronCAD. Thanks again, Scott