SolidWorks 2D Position Paper: A Response

reprinted by permission of Ralph Grabowski, editor

August 2, 2004

See Also

·  SolidWorks Reading Room - feature articles, reviews, news, more - at CADdigest.com  ·  SolidWorks directory - at TenLinks.com

It was coincidence, we are sure, that immediately after Joe Dunne of SolidWorks left our office in his rental car that an email arrived from Autodesk, subtly titled, "Offering another perspective..."

The attachment, "SolidWorks 2D Position Paper," tried to show that the new IntelliCAD-based DWG Editor featured in the not-yet-shipping SolidWorks 2005 is A Very Poor Idea.

We figure Autodesk has simmering paranoia over IntelliCAD, the software that - at one time, in the previous millennium - came closest to unseating AutoCAD as Master of the Universe. Autodesk's focus, money, and programming have left IntelliCAD crawling. Developmentally, IntelliCAD is somewhere between Release 12 and 14.

While the SolidWorks effort (DWG Editor is meant for touching up .dwg files, not replacing AutoCAD) is interesting, we find it more interesting that Autodesk ignores MicroStation V8 - a more dangerous product, in our opinion. Both MicroStation and SolidWorks edit .dwg files: big deal; so do other CAD competitors. Only MicroStation embeds the .dwg data in its .dgn files.

After Autodesk released their position paper into the wild, we found what we think to be errors. Here are excerpts of corrections we sent Autodesk pr last week:

"The technology has been available for many years and has gone by the name of IntelliCAD or more recently BricsCad." The sentence implies IntelliCAD recently changed its name to BricsCad. IntelliCAD is like Linux, in that there are several flavors. BricsCad is the name of one flavor, based in Europe; SolidWorks uses the CADopia flavor, based in California.

"It does not use any original Autodesk tools or software to correctly read or write .DWG files." True, but misleading. Autodesk refuses to provide help in decoding .dwg files, even after invitations from the Open Design Alliance. Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz calls DWG "the standard," but does not allow the standard to be documented, as standards are. And, we suspect, Autodesk would refuse SolidWorks use of its AutoCAD Engine.

"If this reverse-engineered technology erroneously reads or writes a dimension or note, it is likely that parts will be inaccurately manufactured...." It is true that IntelliCAD does not read .dwg files perfectly. However, the examples given -- dimensions and notes -- are not problems. These (and most other entities) are read and written perfectly.

"IntelliCAD has difficulty with even simple objects like AutoCAD .shx fonts...." In fact, IntelliCAD includes .shx fonts, and displays them correctly. It is, however, possible to set up IntelliCAD (as well as
AutoCAD) so that fonts do not load correctly, thus creating the impression that the text is being rendered incorrectly.

Another example was, however, illustrated correctly by Autodesk: tolerance values are displayed in IntelliCAD 4 with placeholder text, "tol" or "val."

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