DeLapp
& Associates, Inc. dba
DeLapp Engineering �
A User's Analysis of
Intellicad
By J. Marsden DeLapp, PE
A Brief History of Intellicad
Where did IntelliCAD come from? Softdesk, Inc created IntelliCAD. It was conceived as a CAD package that would provide the functionality of AutoCAD, including LISP programming. The program uses the dwg file format. It reads and writes dwg files to be compatible with AutoCAD.
Autodesk, Inc. (the owners of AutoCAD) agreed to purchase Softdesk in December 1996. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) got involved and required Softdesk to sell IntelliCAD before Softdesk could be acquired by Autodesk. Softdesk sold IntelliCAD to Boomerang Technology, Inc who immediately turned around and sold it to Visio Corporation.[1] The developers also moved from Softdesk to Visio. According to the agreement with the FTC, Autodesk is also prohibited from purchasing or interfering with IntelliCAD for 10 years. [2]
IntelliCAD is Born
I joined the beta testing of IntelliCAD in January 1998. I was quite impressed. It had the feel of AutoCAD but some features were a huge step ahead of AutoCAD. IntelliCAD was released in March 1998. At the time, it had some very serious problems with stability and had a nasty habit of locking up when using LISP routines. Since then Visio has released five patches to fix problems and add missing features.
Technical Details of IntelliCAD vs. AutoCAD
Most of my experience with AutoCAD has been with release 12 for dos, release 13 for dos and R13 for windows. This is a comparison of AutoCAD R13 (ACR13) vs. IntelliCAD 98e versions. At the end I will mention relevant changes in AutoCAD 2000 that affect this comparison.
IntelliCAD has very good file compatibility with R14 dwg files. IntelliCAD is more compatible with old releases of AutoCAD than AutoCAD. IntelliCAD will "SaveAs" drawings in formats readable by older versions of AutoCAD. AutoCAD does not do this.
I have had some problems opening ACR13 drawing files with IntelliCAD. But I also discovered that the problems happen because AutoCAD corrupted the drawing files! Problem files can be opened in AutoCAD and after running the audit command and saving, IntelliCAD can then open the file. I wonder why AutoCAD does not automatically audit the file and correct corrupt drawings without having to do it manually.
IntelliCAD uses a multiple document interface so you can open multiple drawings at the same time. You can copy or move entities between drawings just as easy as moving or copying within a drawing. There is no need to wblock items, close the drawing, open another drawing, insert the wblock and delete the wblock file.
