October 11, 1993

An Open Letter about Generic CADD
AUTODESK CONFERENCE
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
San Francisco, CA

To: Generic CADD Professionals and the Good People at Autodesk, Inc.

Subject: Requirements for New CADD Programs

Please consider these as serious opinions from a hardcore user, dedicated 3rd party Generic CADD developer, Generic CADD dealer/trainer, and former AutoConvert Beta tester. Prior to this date we have received no offical information, no Beta copy, or anything else related to an Autodesk replacement for CADD 6 except lots and lots of upsetting rumors from both Generic CADD and AutoCAD users. I do not wish to use AutoCAD for production work, but the organizations that pay my bills (Texaco, Unocal, etc) require AutoCAD and/or DXF files of their finished projects.

As far as I know CADD 6.1 was not beta tested. The local Egghead software store had the "new" 6.1 version of Generic CADD on sale weeks before the folks at Autodesk Developer Marketing could get copies to distribute. Here we are months later and the one major new feature (save as AutoCAD .DWG file) still does not work.

The traditional Generic 2D CADD approach provides a high performance CADD program, at a reasonable price, that is able to perform well for an individual using a single personal computer. This concept has huge market potential. Most buildings are designed and built by small firms that need PCs for bookkeeping, invoicing, letter writing, cost estimating, and 2D drafting. I can sell anyone a complete, ready to run, new 486-DX33 system with Local VESA Bus, 1024x768 CTR, 3-Button Mouse, etc. and CADD software for less than the cost of AutoCAD alone. I will train any good traditional architectural draftsman to be productive in CADD 6.0 in six hours using my 2X4.CAD AEC Utilities.

Adding a more open approach for file transfer from System to System would have been a positive improvement, but alas, the poor Acon thing still does not quite work. Perhaps it is really a con. After conversion, the drawing will still require major revision. Did someone stick his sabot into the works? I wonder what the "How to use CADD with CAD" manual cost. An honest title would be: "How we look down from CAD to CADD." The cover design is truly ugly. Why the big Unix shell on a DOS program? The box is not very practical either without field modification. The new ACAD menu was a nice idea but what I needed was a Generic style two letter command structure for AutoCAD. Put that in the Generic 2D box and you will sell lots of software to the Large Company AutoCAD users. The great DXF pitfall has always been text conversion and little advice is given in the new manual. Text % spacing is not even listed in those long tables and the line type conversion table has errors. Use the 6.0 version until 6.1 is debuged.

File conversion to other programs will never be seamless until old AutoCAD has line widths, true curves and true fills instead of those traces, primitive short line segments and scribbled areas. A refined AutoCAD should have been the first priority at Autodesk, Inc. rather than the mongrelization of Generic.

Four Major 6.1.0 DXF Problems:

1> To get a string the same length as a text line with ROMANS.FNT try 35.5% spacing, other fonts have other spacing. You must use the same ACAD font in both programs or there is no hope. The LER.FNT will not convert to LER.SHX anymore, defaults to TXT, why I ask? Right justification comes out skewed in Save as DWG but correct with DXF. A conversion table that would relate the fixed kerning in .SHX files to the % spacing in .FNT files and then adjust the character width in ACAD to end up with the same string length could work.

2> How to get the same line type. None of the eight standard X2 ACAD line types are supported and someone still thinks that an ACAD Centerline is dash-dot-dash.

3> ACAD by-layer has seized control. You now get the first color and the first line type you used in the layer. Never noticed this happening before.

4> Several items in the default setup that worked in 6.0 do not work in the 6.1 AutoConvert program. File path set for DWG and DXF places the files in the CADD6 directory instead of the CADD6\DWG sub directory. The font conversion table does not work! You must set "prompt for unknown fonts to YES" and then type in the fonts that it can not find. This is related to the problems with LER.FNT to LER.SHX noted above. The preserve screen colors does not work. Sometimes I get AutoCAD colors with numbers up in the hundreds. Create fills does not work both ways, it never did. Generic 6.1.1 is no better as far as I can tell. This was all reported to tech support along with the files and plots on 08/25/93.

My first hands on computer experience was back in 1971. We had one of the now classic TI portable terminals with acoustic modem and built in printer in our office. I had used and been around computer drafting with the major corp's 15 years before the advanced PC-AT came into my personal life. It came with CADD 2.0 installed and I was hooked. Drew Standard Details for my plans, made xerox decals of them and stuck them on the tracing paper. File size was limited then but later on we added an AST memory board that made full size drawings possible. Ran CADD with the screen menu off, try that with other programs. The AEC digitizer menu became a handy thing to stick notes under. Even then some of my good, AutoCAD expert, friends were using Autosketch to save time before finishing their drawings in AutoCAD. A few months ago I donated my "Hamilton" table with the "Bruning" drafting arm to Glendale College. I only use AutoCAD when it is absolutly necessary to check converted drawings. I have spent a lot of time and have plotted a lot of drawings to find work-a-rounds for AutoConvert but the new Autodesk version has stumped me so far. This is the major reason the AutoCAD users look down upon things Generic.

I personally do not believe Generic CADD will survive corporate big sister. I have worked for too many good, sucessful, organizations that came apart in weeks when some one with a "better" idea made them over. Companies are actually companies of individual people working together toward a common well defined (Shades of good ol' Peter Drucker) objective. If their goal is to produce, needed, good, affordable, products they succeed. If their stilted MBA outlook is only for the quick and easy buck then they brain-drain their future to death as their talented people are lost.

Generic CADD has had the best user interface in the industry: i.e. fast 2-letter commands plus a 3-button mouse. It is fun to discuss the view that CAD can do so much more than drafting but changes to what is now a mature 2D DOS drafting program, other than positive refinements, may evolve yet another, overpriced, ugly, slow, camel like AutoCAD 12.

An individual operates a successful small business in ways that are quite different from the ways a successful corporation must be managed. The designer using Generic CADD in a small company has a very limited amount of time to spend investigating new program features* and must get on with the project or fail. Our mission here at CADD Cottage is to produce (at less than the street price) the drawing hard copy prints used to obtain building permits and construct a project. The paper document construction job site

contrasts sharply with the ideal of a "paper-less" office. The plan checker at city hall and the trade craftsman does not care how the plans were produced. In the real world fast CADD is a lot better than fancy CAD.

*The transition from Generic CADD to "AutoCAD 2D" needs to be made quick and easy for the user.

1. COMMANDS-- Retain the Two Letter commands. They work best most of the time. They allow short macros and quick drafting. Contrast the MOVE, [Enter], W, [Enter] ACAD command series with WM. That is 7 key strokes versus 2. Generic CADD is three and one half times faster in this case and MOVE is one of the shorter ACAD commands. A digitizer menu is slow, distracting, reduces the drawing area, and is not even needed with Generic CADD except for sometimes tracing something into a drawing. Some thought should be given to placing the most used two letter commands where the left hand can touch type them. Your other hand is busy. Also Alt F12 etc. cannot easly be typed with the one hand. Please do not pre-jigger the F keys for us.

Retain The Two Letter Commands in the New 2D DOS & Windows Versions.

2. MENUS-- Screen menus should be used as training devices only (as in HELP6.) The old CADD6 menu just takes up disk space and HELP6 should be turned off unless a command has been forgotten or you are looking for a file. A pull down HELP6 style menu would be an improvement. Not using the VM command twice would save time. Leave most of the pull down, pop up, and radio button stuff for other programs. They look nice and fancy but just cover up the drawing and slow down the screen display. Most of your users will not have 486DX-66 Mhz, 36MB of RAM machines.

3. SAVE-- SaVe, Window should retain the layer names. Takes a good bit of time to rename them again in a large file. How about SA, ASCII from the existing text in the drawing.

4. FONTS-- We need at least one font that has the full ASCII character set. I have not had the time to work this task in as yet. Get rid of the UnType fonts completely and replace them with single stroke (1"=72 points) type fonts only. Having two text size standards is most confusing. Just go to Adobe Systems and buy their basic font set and include it with Generic, other software vendors do. Suppliment these with some single stroke fonts and the filled fonts designed for small point sizes. They are all available. Have you noticed how much Adobe is like Generic, real fills, real curves, etc.? Generic works very well as a Desk Top Publishing program if you use FONtasm.

5. CURSER-- Forget the tandem curser. It just loves to make unwanted objects in strange places for you.

Sometimes I never saw these objects until the finished job was plotted.

6. GRID-- Setting Grid Size should not turn the Grid Display on. Creates the need for an extra entry for me. If I want the grid on I will turn it on. Good programs do not decide what the user wants to do next. This is my oldest Generic CADD beef and has been on my wish list for years.

7. MS WINDOWS VERSION-- Why all this fuss about Microsoft Windows programs? They just use more screen dots than text programs. They run slower than equal DOS programs on an equal machine. I think CADD has a better Graphics Interface (out damn raster file dots). There is a real need however for a totally compatible, simple, Level-1 sort of windows vector drafting software program for the casual user. This could be a very good base for something like DECK or other "Pop Software" Programs.

I have used MS Windows from its' beginnings. Used Notepad for text editing and the DOS Manager for file maintenance until both were "improved". ( I still run the old versions in 3.1). A lot of frivolous stuff has been added loading up this program and diluting an excellent concept. The Icon thing has been totally overdone. If hieroglyphics were so great why were they replaced by the alphabet? I successfully run "Ami Professional" and "Lotus for Windows" but only on an occasional basis. Autodesk 3D Concepts is a very interesting program & should be refined.. If one spends all day every day in one of these windows programs he must learn to use the keyboard commands anyway to become productive.

The advantages of Windows are high quality printer output, file linking, and the promise of multitasking. Complexity is the great disadvantage. Still can not get the bus mouse to work on my new Local bus 486-DX-33 with ultra VGA. How much time must we spend to make MS richer. Where, Bill Gates, is Windows Light?

8. DOT PLOT-- Provide multitasking. Or at least break the printing, plotting, PDSing, and DXFing utilities back into separate programs so I can DESQview them and go back to work. A needed improvement would be the selection of printed line width by color. Then components would print with the correct line widths. I have been using a macro for years that sets screen line width by color before printing but components do not print correctly. Change Dotplot and not the way components work as individual objects. Blocks are for block heads.

9. PROMPTS-- Many of the newer screen prompt lines display rounded off numbers even when you are using uneven values. This needs improving. See text % spacing for proof of this.

10. DXFING-- Take a fresh look at AutoConvert. There must be a better way. See my comments above. Sell a PDES module for the ones who need it.

11. PLANES-- We work in several different 2D planes in drafting. Please be more generous and give us, at last, an optional ground plane. We poor 2D users must never look down but only ahead with our view toward the far horizon and no compass to guide us. This will also help get 2D files into 3D and back again.

12. FILLS-- The Hatch/Fill Menu needs to have Fill Display On/Off added. FA, F is somewhere else.

13. GCD-- This is one small improvement that has saved me many hours of searching for a file that would otherwise have been lost on a archive floppy or overwritten with an AutoCAD file. Never go back to DWG please. How about .D2D and D3D.

14. GRAPHIC RASTER FILES-- A raster overlay layer should be provided. This is now about the only workable way to use scanned images in a vector drawing. This utility costs hundreds extra for AutoCADD but so do the printing utilities. text utilities, etc. that are included with Generic.

15. POLYLINES-- The only place I have observed them in the real world is when they are painted on the street pavement as traffic arrows. AutoCAD drafters misuse them mostly to mimic line width. But the CADD filled double line thing could be improved to allow non parallel lines. I understand that polylines are very usefull in circuit board design. They are at the bottom of my wish list.

I prefer CADD 3D as a separate module. But 3D development is still running far behind 2D. There are no Macros. There are no curves, only simple vectors (looks just like old AutoCAD). Would some very clever programer please deliver us from this unreal world and give us edges and real surfaces? There is no NorthEast Quadrant, where the old surveyors and map makers live in harmony with their meetsies and their boundsies and their northies and their easties. A very positive viewpoint have they.

See the llustration on Page-11, "G3D Users Guide" for the way it should be but haint. Get an elements of surveying book and read it. Then find a pre new math text on discriptive geometry and study that. If you still understand this poetry, not. Then go get some real experience. You should go out-of-doors and run some traverses the traditional way, and then reduce your field notes to coordinate values with an old Monroe calculator and six place trigonometry tables. We now have it so much better with personal computers rather than persons computing. The way we did real 3D on paper was to describe compound curved surfaces by Lofting (locate water level lines) or with Surface Development (locate highlight lines). These skills are passed down in industry by the draftsmen and few or no books that I know of exist to help you. Maybe some of the craftsman at Boeing or an instructor at Art Center College could help you here. Contour mapping of land is a rather inexact method and only allows one to get a feel for the shapes.

Listen carefully to the users who make a modest living designing with your programs. Learn from them. Good building design drafting is based upon field construction experience. The building trade has a compelling need for your computer programming skills.

CADD 6.0 works well enough to get me by for the next few months but the 6.1 bugs will delay release of our "2X4.CAD Building Design Productivity Utilities + Site Works" until CADD 6.1 is fixed or until we can come up with some additional very clever work around's. 2X4.CAD has always been as DXF proof as we can make it. Look for my latest 6.1 chapter of "Living With AutoCAD" when it is published. I will never accept the advice (just give it up) of my AutoCAD user friends but if I must abandon Generic CADD, I hope that the 2D CAD macros and menus will be compatable with Generic CADD so I can get 2X4.CAD ported over quickly. Also our drawing file archive is now approaching 450 MB; some of which will need to be converted from .GCD to .D2D or whatever.

I would like to give my support for the continued publication of the Generic CADD News Letter. This was the only affordable way I could directly inform CADD users of my products.

I am always available to beta test new Autodesk drafting software. Hopefully there is still a way to save and improve the best 2D CADD Software ever.

Best Regards,

Noel H. Browning
Registered Autodesk Developer 1685