TanCADEM has designed their TanCAD product line with two primary goals: an ease of use that does the traditions of Generic CADD proud; and a control of information that builds a new level of utility into the design/development/drafting/documentation process. TanCAD is designed to work from 2- and 3-letter commands in the same manner Generic CADD and Visual CADD used to such advantage. We have spent more than 500 hours constructing the command set TanCAD will use. The vast majority of the commands follow a mnemonic logic that is easily learned. The commands that are "exceptions" to this logic make sense and are mnemonic in their own right. This was one of the first "design tasks" undertaken -- not something we left to be taken care of "later". If you visualize the Generic CADD or Generic 3DD/3DV2 screens, you know what our interface looks like. This builds the "ease of use" we are striving for.

TanCADEM has taken TanCAD further in that we have spent a lot of time reviewing the process of design/development/drafting and examining the way in which non-graphical information is used within this process. We have constructed (in consultation with hundreds of Generic and Visual CADD users) an entirely new entity that makes embedding of non-graphical information simple to accomplish and very powerful to use. I cannot say more about this as the details of it are one of the "key proprietary features" we intend to use to surprise our competition. We have designed this new entity in such a manner that it will virtually eliminate the lost information that so often dogs design to drafting processes. Everyone who looks at it finds new uses that we did not even guess at!

TanCAD has been designed from a project point of view. Users who do "tasks" will notice very little difference. However, users who work on "projects" will appreciate the manner in which we have designed project integration functions into TanCAD that allow you to break projects down into "steps" that can be worked on by more than one person while still maintaining an "integration view". Among other things (I have to be somewhat evasive here as this is another area where we have "key proprietary features"), this approach makes it very easy to archive and retrieve project information.

We have been careful to maintain the "simplicity + speed = productivity" equation that defined so much of Generic CADD’s power. We have extended this to new areas of CAD that we believe users will appreciate. The drafting machine interface we have come to love has been faithfully executed in the design of TanCAD. We even like to believe that we have improved on Generic CADD’s foundation in this area.