ProgeCAD Smart - Autocad alternative
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Progecad smart prints with a tiny bit of text on the border that says "Private Use Only". Totally inobtrusive. I mentioned Progecad smart here with students and hobbyists in mind. Incidentally (before I get a nasty letter from ProgeCAD) I do not use ProgeCad commercially, when needed, I have access to AutoCad via a company I do work for.
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@lewiswadsworth said:
One of my students told me that is the problem, as well, with the "free" AutoCAD, although I don't know how obnoxious it is.
Quite an irritant . One of the interior designers in one of our project was using a student version . So every time I brought in some geometry from their drawings it used to corrupt our drawings with this tag . There is a nifty little program that helped us out in getting rid of the tag but a headache all the same .
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"There is a nifty little program that helped us out in getting rid of the tag but a headache all the same"
Hi,
slightly off-topic but picking up on the above post...From within AutoCAD, it is possible to get rid of the student's watermark, there's no need for other software: save the student-produced DWG-file as a DXF, close and re-open it (AutoCAD does not 'Export' as DXF, it's an option in "Save as...").
ASFAIK, this has worked over the years. I believe that Autodesk has not 'implemented' the means to store the watermark within the DXF file-format, for the time-being-or-until-they-read-this-post
Cheers,
- Diego -
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Good catch, Diego.
(Diego is my boss, incidentally, at the school where I teach.)
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progeCAD Professional is available as educational for free.
With Educational licenses the schools are allowed to install unlimited sites for classroos and also teacher and students can use on their household PCs
http://www.progesoft.com/icad/richiesta_cd_icad.asp?type=Scuola&lang=eng -
Ive been having a play with ProgeCad Smart....with the intention of probably buying the pro version.
One useful function for me is being able to export as a PDF [A1 format] for sending to my plot shop.
This is a big step up from mucking around with plotter drivers and something that still, I believe, isn't supported in ACAD LT [correct me if Im wrong]
Generally, though, I'm finding the UI very comfortable and not too different from my old ACAD LT2000
And just a note to Jon above: the crosshairs are editable but cant find how to resize the pickbox...which is annoying but am getting used to the smallish box.
In the end......I'm very inclined to pay $400AUD for something approaching full ACAD specs. rather than around $1800AUD for ACAD LT!
Im happy to put up with a few glitches and bugs, and pocket the $1400!! -
Hi Stu
I agree, I'd rather give my money to ProgeCad than AutoDesk! ProgeCAD proves that a robust cad program can be produced and sold cheaply. I'm not bothered by the pickbox either, these days I tend to spend as little time in cad as possible anyway because I draw just about everything in SU. I pull off 2d dwg's from the model and then really just use cad for annotating and layouts.
Thanks for the cosshairs, I'll check that out.
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Dear Jon,
Could not resist saying "Good morning". You were up early this morning.
I have been following this thread quite closely as I use AutoCAD and Inventor. I am also about to try out SpaceClaim too. Just need a few more hours in the day.
Going back to the thread and using SU for 2D drawing. I don't see why a simple 2D drawing mode cannot be added to SU. The mode would:
- Switch to and lock the parallel projection camera mode
- Disable rotate but leave pan and zoom
- Create a drawing plane in the X-Y plane, the area defined by the user
- Disable all the 3D tools
- Disable the making of faces function (or be able to toggle it on or off)
- Etc
There could be a 2D drawing toolbar which is enabled and disabled when entering/leaving the mode. The 3D toolbars could similarly be enabled/disabled, perhaps changing colour or becoming faint to indicate availability.
Just a few thoughts at 06:57.
Regards,
Bob -
Hi Bob!
@unknownuser said:
I don't see why a simple 2D drawing mode cannot be added to SU.
I kind of do this in SU now, everthing I model has 2 layers, a 2d layer with plan geometry and a 3d layer with 3d geometry. Once you get into it is a very efficient way of working.
@unknownuser said:
- Disable the making of faces function (or be able to toggle it on or off)
That would be very useful!
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The ITC (IntellicAD Technology Consortium) was Open Source when it was first formed. They gave away the software for free and you could compile it and use it. The idea was co-operative development but the only people who co-operated were the Developers the ITC paid. So a decision was made to make it "quasi open source" (thats the words the Chairman at the time used, I swear) whereby only the members who paid could play. Even with that impediment the ITC is a unique organization with one goal in mind, Software Development. Where Autodesk spends your hard earned money on lawsuits against competitors, executive salaries, and mass amounts of marketing, the ITC does no marketing, has volunteer officers, and the only reason they have a legal budget is to protect their trademarks. I am very familar with the non-profit, I was the sole employee for several years at the early part of the millenium.
I have to say it is nice reading positive things about progeCAD IntelliCAD. I have been representing it now ever since I left the ITC and have been very pleased with its usage. There was a time in the not so distant past that those who tried IntelliCAD came away with a metallic taste in their mouths due to the poor experience. The folks at the ITC have worked extremely hard to rid itself of the poor performance and reliability while trying to overcome users perception of those first couple of years. I think it is paying off.
"And just a note to Jon above: the crosshairs are editable but cant find how to resize the pickbox...which is annoying but am getting used to the smallish box."
How would you set the pickbox size in AutoCAD assuming you did not have a dialog box? I was trained to use AutoCAD on version 1.03 so I learned to use it with the keyboard. If you asked me how to find something on those little pictures up and the top I wouldn't know where I was but perhaps that, and the programming I did for years inside AutoCAD allows me to know you can type setvar at the command line. Tell progeCAD "pickbox" as the variable to set, then set the size you want!
"ProgeCAD Smart does not support 3d surfaces or solids so it is probably fairer to say that it is equivalent to AutoCAD LT."
But the big brother of progeCAD Smart! does. progeCAD Professional is less than $400 USD and if you are a student, your teacher, professor, the school can get progeCAD Professional free to all your computer labs and the students can have a copy at home, for free. We have supplied over 300 schools since the program has been active including large universities to junior high schools. Have your teacher go here: http://www.progesoft.us/index.pl/Free%20for%20Schools and request Free for Schools...
While some of the IntelliCAD members have use Wine to run the software on Linux, we have have taken a different direction. We saw that virtualization is a way to have your cake and eat it too. We have run progeCAD on both the Mac (http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl/Mac%20Users) and on Linux (http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl/Linux%20Users) using virtual machines and quite frankly it isn't much different than a PC running progeCAD standalone with Windows, except you are right on the Mac or Linux desktop and have access to all those OS capabilities and applications.
One of the things that isnt quite there yet for the iCAD crowd is the third party market. Of course AutoCAD doesnt really have one either since they either bought out or crushed the independent developers so they could move into their markets. Does anyone remember what it used to be like with the 100s of developers creating applications to run on AutoCAD. Now those were the days. We have a few progeCAD add-ons such as an [url=http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl?id=4434:3hdzp994]Architectural app[/url:3hdzp994] and a [url=http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl/IntelliCAD%20Products/IntelliCAD%20Civil%20Survey:3hdzp994]Civil Survey (cogo, dtm, road design)[/url:3hdzp994] package. We will be adding a CAM add-on soon and are on the lookout for other products which run under progeCAD. If anyone sees any send a shout out!
"There is a nifty little program that helped us out in getting rid of the tag but a headache all the same"
Shame Shame. I hope you donated to the charity progeSOFT requested when you downloaded and install progeCAD Smart!. They dont require it but I suppose if you are going to reverse engineer the drawings to remove the watermark you should at least help out the cause.
I like the idea that progeCAD Smart! is Charityware, if you download and use it they ask that you donate to a worthly cause. A great company, great software, and a great price. -
@unknownuser said:
One of my students told me that is the problem, as well, with the "free" AutoCAD, although I don't know how obnoxious it is.
We are using Acad and Revit here at my school and No tag, No watermarks at all with Autodesk education versions or students versions, at least since 2007. But I will definitively look into ProgeCad because the trend to use free or open source programs is growing each day (Open Office, Google SketchUp, Wings, Gimp, Xnview, InkScape, Kerkythea, and so on).
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Well, the AutoCAD is the grand daddy Master flash and it's good you are getting to utilize that product. And Revit, haven't had the opportunity to play with that but when I was a developer back in the day I kept telling the other folks laying down the code that someday we would define everything in a building including the paths the robots would travel to erect the structure. As I understand it Revit can do that. What? oh, my buddy here just tapped me on the shoulder and said it couldn't but it could do everything else.
When your School applies for the Free for Educational program they get progeCAD Professional which is their version of grand daddy Master flash, at least compared to progeCAD Smart! and it has no watermarks out of the box, at least at first, unless you leave the box in a leaky basement or something. The School can allow their students to use the serial number to register it for at home or for their laptops as well as put it on every computer they own, used to own, or thought of ever owning! As long as they actually owned them.
Now for something completely diferent. Did you know you could use a combination of honey and boraxo to take care of that pesky sugar ant problem that happens every spring and winter when they decide it is to damn cold outside without a jacket and decide to setup in your house because it is nicer than the neighbors, who also snores loudly?
Back to your regularly scheduled channel...
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ProgeCAD - The real autocad
alternative
I dont know why people waste money on costly CAD Software's when they can get the same results with ProgeCAD .
Anybody who is familiar with AutoCAD can immediately use progeCAD without any training because the layout, commands, toolbars are almost same.
For architects, engineers, interior designers, builders & developers.
Visit http://progecad.in to know more and download progecad for free http://progecad.in -
There is an other free alternative for AutoCad, named QCAD. This software comes with Ubuntu and is free-ware, it saves the drawings in *.dxf format A-CAD 2000 or R12.
@unknownuser said:
I dont know why people waste money on costly CAD Software's when they can get the same results with ProgeCAD .
The reason why people buy an expensive license is the ability of creating your own tools. In AutoCad you can write in LISP since it came on the market and most of your old tools will still work in the latest versions of A-CAD. It is even possible to create tools in Visual Basic and Visual C++.
When Iworked as a CAD drawer and used A-CAD I wrote many LISP tools that saved loads of time, read also money. With intelligent tools you can automate anything, this stops you from doing the same over and over again and makes your live as a drawer a lot easier.
An A_CAD license is not that expensive at all for a company if it is a powerful tool.
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@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
I dont know why people waste money on costly CAD Software's when they can get the same results with ProgeCAD .
The reason why people buy an expensive license is the ability of creating your own tools. In AutoCad you can write in LISP since it came on the market and most of your old tools will still work in the latest versions of A-CAD. It is even possible to create tools in Visual Basic and Visual C++.
Hop on over to http://www.icadsales.com and download a copy of progeCAD and demo it for 30 days. It has AutoLISP, it has ADS (SDS C++), now, it doesn't have ARX, yet, but really, how many companies create custom objects anyway? If you can get the same software for 1/10th the price would you continue to buy the more expensive brand? In some cases the answer is yes, there are those who simply have to have Gucci, my wife for one, but I secretly buy her the knockoff and she is none the wiser,
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ProgeCAD Smart says that it is only for non-commercial personal use. What is the definition of "personal use" ? Is it to use it to draw out ones own house? Or to use it for playing on CAD? Or is it for learning purposes only? In what way a person will find "personal use" for a CAD software? I am really curious to know about this.
Thanks in advance
With best regards
PRSS -
Personal use is usually meant as 'non commercial use', so as long as you arent producing deliverables for people with it youre okay. Probably varies slightly from company to company, though, so worth waiting for the official answer.
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@remus said:
Personal use is usually meant as 'non commercial use', so as long as you arent producing deliverables for people with it youre okay. Probably varies slightly from company to company, though, so worth waiting for the official answer.
I can not give you the "official answer" as we are not the developers but from the progeCAD website there is a pretty good statement that should be clear enough...
** Private use Only: progeCAD 2008 Smart! is for private, non-commercial use only. The use of progeCAD 2008 Smart! within any organization or for commercial and business purposes is strictly prohibited.
If you plan a business/commercial usage, please take a look to our Professional products or download the Trial Version*
To me that means that if you sell your stuff and you used progeCAD Smart! to help create it, your in violation of the agreement...
FYI to all, while the 2009 free Smart! version is not available yet, progeSOFT has just released the 2009 professional version of progeCAD Professional. 30 day trials available at http://www.icadsales.com/index.pl/Download%20IntelliCAD
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In the end, that means you can only use it as a student or to learn the software....
Which is exactly the same as a 'student/education version' or a 'trial version' of the other CAD programs.
The only difference would be that your trial doesn't expire.Semantics.
I like Google sketchups approach better. You can use the free version for professionl use.
That is probably the reason it is so popular and used in almost every architecture firm in the world. -
@kwistenbiebel said:
In the end, that means you can only use it as a student or to learn the software....
Which is exactly the same as a 'student/education version' or a 'trial version' of the other CAD programs.
The only difference would be that your trial doesn't expire.Semantics.
I like Google sketchups approach better. You can use the free version for professionl use.
That is probably the reason it is so popular and used in almost every architecture firm in the world."the reason it is so popular and used in almost every architecture firm in the world" might also have something to do with the fact it is owned by the largest Internet firm on the planet and just the simple act of putting the name Google on the product generates more press buzz than progeSOFT could muster in a thousand years.
Now, if Google would associate sketchup with a charity and encourage users to donate just think what they might accomplish with their marketing juggernaut.
The main thrust behind progeCAD Smart! and before that progeCAD LT has always been that it is charityware. Utilize the software for free and donate to a worthy cause if you choose to. The brand awareness is a great benefit of that idea. As a trial though, Smart! is pretty crippled compared to the Professional version of progeCAD.
If everything in life were free, motivation and innovation would be priceless
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