Deelip.com

Friday, November 21, 2008

Free ACAD

Page 27 of the Nov/Dec issue of AUGIWorld Magazine has this advertisement.

What on earth is A/CAD? What is A/CAD LT? And what is A/CAD LT Express. And why is it free? There are (1) things I know, (2) things I don't know, (3) things I can tell you; and (4) things I can't tell you, thanks to some NDA which I regretfully signed.

(1) I know the answers to all the questions above, quite simply because I have A/CAD LT Express installed on my computer.

(2) I don't know how this advertisement found a place in AUGIWorld, the official publication of Autodesk User Group International.

(3) I can tell you that IMSI/Design, the makers of the TurboCAD range of products are upto something. And wary of the fact that they are taking on Autodesk, they appear to be doing it carefully. For example, they applied and got a trademark for "ACAD" this year. Incidently, Autodesk had two trademarks for "ACAD" which they abandonned in 1987 and 1992. So I guess Autodesk may not drag IMSI to court saying that they own the "ACAD" name, like how they think they own "DWG".

(4) I can't tell you things that I can't tell you.

According to the advertisement, A/CAD will be displayed in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel between December 2nd and 4th. I hear that another CAD vendor is having it's annual user conference in the same city at the same hotel at the same time. Gee... I wonder who that may be.

posted by Deelip Menezes at 1:03 PM

28 Comments:

  • This was the highlight of my blog readings this morning. Thanks.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 7:38 PM, November 21, 2008  

  • The pleasure is mine. Really.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 7:43 PM, November 21, 2008  

  • "According to the advertisement, A/CAD will be displayed in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel..."

    The ad says nothing about the Ventetian Hotel, the location of AU.

    If this is a new CAD product designed to compete against one of Autodesk's, then they would be stationed at a different hotel.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 8:53 PM, November 21, 2008  

  • That is not free, look at FreeCAD:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 9:31 PM, November 21, 2008  

  • Let's see what effect this will have on Autodesk's pricing. Probably nothing.

    BTW. IMSI is one of the founding members of the OpenDWG Alliance and member of IntelliCAD Technology Consortium.

    Anyother IntelliCAD clone?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10:11 PM, November 21, 2008  

  • Ralph, if you follow the link in the ad you will see that IMSI will be very much present during AU at the Venetian Hotel.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 12:37 AM, November 22, 2008  

  • Anonymous: "That is not free, look at FreeCAD:"

    A/CAD LT Express is free. FreeCAD is free and open source.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 12:46 AM, November 22, 2008  

  • Deelip, just for the record, IMSI's trademark application for "ACAD" was refused due to likelihood of confusion with another registered "ACAD" mark for CAD software. Hence, I presume, "A/CAD(tm)" in their ad.

    By Blogger Owen Wengerd, At 1:32 AM, November 22, 2008  

  • IMSI is no longer a member of the ITC.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 6:21 AM, November 22, 2008  

  • Owen, I dont see any "/" at http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=aisn59.3.2

    The Word Mark clearsy says "ACAD" as did both the abandonned trademarks of Autodesk.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 9:04 AM, November 22, 2008  

  • Hi Deelip...

    Interesting, there will be many 2D CAD like AutoCAD. BTW, have you try this software : http://www.a9tech.com/ and www.progecad.com. I want to know the comparison compare to ZWCAD and also Bricsys.

    Thank You

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 5:53 PM, November 22, 2008  

  • Anonymous,

    progeCAD is the old IntelliCAD 6.x techology. I believe A9CAD is also the same.

    Bricscad is a complete rewrite, quite similar to what the new IntelliCAD 7 will be. ZWCAD is a bit of a mixup. They appear to be using the old IntelliCAD 6.x technology, but have managed to add some components of the new IntelliCAD as well.

    Disclaimer: I do not have access to the source code of any the above products and am oferring an opinion by looking at the DLLs shipped by the respective products.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 8:16 PM, November 22, 2008  

  • The time has come for an updated full in depth comparison table chart between different intellicad incarnations.
    The market is extremely confused in this moment.
    not an easy task, but somebody have to do.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 8:56 PM, November 22, 2008  

  • Hi deelip, yes. I want to know the comparison. I am confuse which is the best between zwcad vs bricscad vs progecad. Wish you can give us more info. Thanks

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10:01 PM, November 22, 2008  

  • Kholish,

    I am not expert in these AutoCAD clones and neither have I stress tested them thoroughly to even make an attempt at comparing them. But here is a rule of thumb that I would use: Any clone that is based on the old IntelliCAD 6.x platform is going to have performance issues. These are not my words. These are the words of the ITC development team itself, that I heard when I was at the IntelliCAD World Meeting in Greece last month.

    A few ITC members got fed up waiting for the ITC to deliver on the new IntelliCAD 7 platform and they have gone ahead and developed their own AutoCAD clones. One of them is Bricsys, with their Bricscad. Rumour had it that ZWCAD was going off on a tangent as well. But when I asked them in Greece, they stood by the ITC.

    I cannot comment on IMSI and A/CAD yet. Let's just say that I like what I see.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 12:16 AM, November 23, 2008  

  • Correct, we are not a member of the ITC... and what we've created is not just another IntelliCAD clone. We were a member in the past and have been rooting for IntelliCAD for many years, though. As Deelip suggested, we felt that we just couldn't wait any longer. Ultimately, we are fortunate enough to have our own strong CAD code to act as a base... and are very happy with the dev path we took in terms of reliability, performance, and extended feature set.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 4:09 AM, November 23, 2008  

  • Hi Deelip...

    Thanks for your info.
    So looks like Bricscad is the best AutoCAD clone.

    Hi Royal...

    What is the software that your talking about. Do you mean Bricscad or ZWCAD ?

    Sorry, not clear....

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 8:51 AM, November 23, 2008  

  • I believe Royal is from IMSI

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 9:10 AM, November 23, 2008  

  • again...
    Thanks Deelip ;)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 9:28 AM, November 23, 2008  

  • Yes, Royal from IMSI/Design.

    Kholish, we are introducing a new AutoCAD LT work-alike called A/CAD LT Express on Dec 3rd. We are using our code, not an ITC variant. And unlike the ITC, we are not targeting AutoCAD, rather, we believe we're a compelling alternative to AutoCAD LT... especially since our price is free. More on Dec 3rd.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 5:20 AM, November 24, 2008  

  • Deelip, the (tm) symbol in the ad copy indicates that the mark is not registered. "ACAD" is a registered trademark, but "A/CAD" is not. Presumably, that is why IMSI used "A/CAD". I'm just guessing, but if I'm right, I would expect the name to change once the owners of "ACAD" get wind of it.

    By Blogger Owen Wengerd, At 9:57 AM, November 24, 2008  

  • I'm no legal expert. You may have a point.

    Either way, pretty soon I think you may be getting a lot of fodder for cadcourt.com to chew on.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 11:03 AM, November 24, 2008  

  • It is like those samples they give at the mall...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 9:19 PM, November 24, 2008  

  • I wonder what happened to the Dec. 4 release date? That and the site seems to have been scrubbed of all possible A/CAD references.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1:33 AM, December 16, 2008  

  • There is a story to that, which I guess, will become public knowledge soon.

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 10:11 AM, December 16, 2008  

  • Threat of a lawsuit perhaps...?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1:46 PM, December 16, 2008  

  • This now known as DoubleCAD. We will see how long that name lasts...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 5:06 AM, January 06, 2009  

  • Now its *really* time for a comparison table between intellicad products, no need to compare to autocad, or other dxf products like qcad or linuxcad or varicad. just "intellicad twines or clones or whatever they liked to be called".

    your group @intellicad.net does not seem to me a good idea after a second thought. intellicad vendors just have too much biased opinions, and progecad is filling you with unnecesary spam.

    all this intellicad stuff is just confusing the market TOO much.

    -----
    btw: http://intellicad.net is just pointing to godaddy girls. they are too much involved in mixing sex with web domains. is easy to fix this to point the www public site.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 10:04 PM, April 28, 2009  

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