AJ's Acad3rdParty

For organizational convenience I define 3rd Party Software to include other Windows based software and the tools that come with the Windows Operating System, software purpose designed to work with autoCad typically thought of as 3rd party software, aids created within AutocCad and then passed to other AutoCad users to utilize and finally outright competition products that can be used as an alternative to AutoCad for a specific task particularly if the output is utilised in a project for which AutoCad was the primary tool used.

Aids dedicated to, or primarily used in 3D Drawing/Modelling, Landscape Cad or Cad Customising for example are referred to in those sections leaving this page to refer to aids which have a more general application.

www.tenlinks.com/../ADDONS TenLinks.com is a good place to start looking at the range of 3rd party addons.

OLE linking is software version specific! No real fix, unless you want to hold on to your version of WORD (or other application) and AutoCAD R14 (or other AutoCad version) forever. (Quote from respected forum contributer.) Heard horror story ..opened an old drawing done in R14 in A2000 .. just like A2000 opened R14, Word 2000 will link to the Word 97 files right? Wrong. OLE is a novelty. Another point made is that printing is difficult. Got to think about bringing it in as an AutoCad object but of course thats not linking. Can use Excel as tool then (say) take into Power Point and turn the image into a windows meta file to place in Autocad.
McNeel has a product to ease OLE linking but I don't believe it solves the version specific problem.

*** AutoCAD 2002 NEWS *** In the Volvo View Forum I find out AutoCad 2002 can't produce dwf's!! Might be addressed in a Service Pack ..no time frame given. And to really make you weep, Autocad's marketing people have decided not to produce a viewer specifically to allow dwf's produced with 2002 to be viewed with a browser. No joking, right now if you need to get dwf's to anyone stay with AutoCad 2000 or at least keep it installed on one computer for that purpose. Why don't they tell people that there is reduced functionality in a new product ..perhaps in due course they will offer the ability to display .dwf's as an 'Extension' or include it to give 'extra value' to the VIP program. Tell this to the R14 people moving up to 2002 who have missed out on the 2000 Express Tools (as well as losing the facility to produce web ready jpgs and gifs directly from their shaded 3d models that was removed from A2000 on).

www.cd-cad.co.nz CD-CAD (NZ AutoCad dealer)
See the dwf drawing in their index page that provides an opportunity for you to download whip and look at the whole dwf-whip thing (which has never taken off to the same extent as the promotion for it). See Volvo that displays dwf, dxf and dwg.
Also see the summary of AutoCad 2000 Express Tools and some free downloads such as RECENT.ZIP (5KB) Freeware menu enhancement - adds a new pull-down menu with the last 26 files that have been opened. Place the recent.vlx file in your AutoCAD Startup suite (via Appload) Works with A2000/2000i.
Has wish lists, including the only Inventor wish list I'm aware of.

www.intelcad.com IntelCAD
Expert Canadian site. Download Alex's dwf to dwg converter. Look at Alex's discussion on accuracy and download John Walker's original 1983 10kb file that allows you to read a plaque on the moon as a demonstration of zooming and AutoCad's accuracy.
accuracy/accuracy.html My copy of Alex Januszkiewicz's article on AutoCad accuracy and John Walker's 1983 solar.dwg (10kb) download.

www.actify.com Actify Spinfire. Cadence July 2002 Editors Choice).
Described as 'Acrobat for 3D' by its makers, Actify SpinFire is a unique product that allows users of CAD products to view, share, exchange, and annotate 3D files without the native programs -unhindered by incompatibility. Like the Acrobat Reader, SpinFire Viewer is downloadable free of charge.
In addition to the viewing/markup capabilities generally found in other competing products, SpinFire Professional allows measuring, dimensioning, cross-sectioning, rotation, exporting/importing, and a host of other functions.

www.irfanview.com Irfanview Graphics Viewer. Free for non-commercial use. $10 for commercial.
Opens many formats but notably saves in bmp, gif, jpg, png, ico, tif, tiff and tga. 800kB download.

CUSTOMIZED ICONS. Design icons with the free On-Line Icon Generator at www.favicon.co.uk. These can be placed on your Web site with the HTML script emailed to you. IE 5.0 or higher required.

www.autotraxeda.com Kavac Software Products (UK).
Click on the Products button. In addition to their Dos based and Windows based dwg viewers they have a range of AutoCad related and stand alone products.
Free (200kb) downloading accelerator and a free Spice program (free for the time being!).

Note: A number of AutoCad drawing aid listings for drawing are directed at AutoCad LT (and Intellicad) which are a fraction of the price of full AutoCad and probably meets the needs of 95% of users (rather than full on drafters). My gut instinct is you should probably have a LT seat and a IntelliCad seat (PowerCad?) and see if there are options for you to stop being dragged toward increasingly costly hardware and software upgrades for at least some of your seats.

While not exactly 3rd party don't forget Bonus and Express Tools much of which was contributed originally by users. See my recently created acadbonusexpress/index.html for links to content in that folder and to other local content (likely in acadcust folder) that should really be consolidated in the acadbonusexpress folder in time.

www.abicad.com Input software for AutoCad and related family of products. Focuses on making the mouse perform more roles so less tool buttons are needed to be up. Includes the rewhell.arx tool for MDT reccomended in an Adesk Discussion forum posting. Duplicated in MDT 3rd Party section of MDT page.

www.asvic.com.au For Mech Q and other products to work with AutoCad and Intellicad.

www.pendean.com for Autocad LT shareware (also IntelliCad and PowerCad). It is reasonably priced and brings to you much of the functionality that Autocad's Softdesk used to provide through menus.
"Myth: Autocad LT is not as customizable at the full version. this is a viscious rumor. It's not true. You just have to learn what LT's limits are and stay within them" -posters comment commending pendean.com.
Same poster also commented that "Autocads Symbols 2000 uses the 'stupid' browser method to insert blocks slowing productivity while Symbols97 has menus that are easily customizable". See posting.

www.drcauto.com DRCAuto. 3D modelling add-on for AutoCad Light.
Use Light for 3D modelling, run AutoLisp routines and other useful stuff. Autodesk hates them for all the reasons a Light user should love them. The word in the (AutoDesk!) Discussion forums is that DRCAuto does all it says it can do.

www.caddzone.com Design Automation Consulting. Tony Tanzillo'a site. For add-ons to aid working with AutoCad and AutoCad Lite. See his free downloads including AcadXTabs: MDI Document Tabs for AutoCAD! Also see his AutoDesk Watch. Tony works with Delphi and provides links for the Delphi programming community.

www.aay.com Palisades Research. Autocad Utilities and Related Products
In particular for Squiggle. To transform your drawings into that hand drawn look. 15 Day trial.

www.webcom.com/cadware CadWare. Makers of LETTEREASE for control of text inside AutoCAD. On arcs, circles and polylines for example.

www.multicim.com/pmenu.html Pro Menu Tools.
Download shareware version (has all buttons and most of the features).
Quoted as the site to see how to reduce the unwanted parts of the Object Properties toobar in a forum. See the forum discussion solutions in my acadcust/object_toolbar.txt. Includes a change to the .mns file and a (probably better these days) partial menu method.
Excellent documentation, easy install, well-designed tools. PRO Menu is a first-class AutoCAD customization package. 'Cadalyst Labs - First Looks February 2000'
'For the money, PRO Menu is a bargain that can really jazz up a vanilla AutoCAD station' Cadence Magazine September 2000

www.manusoft.com QuikPik
QuikPik allows you to turn on 'enhanced right click treatment'. A quick right click is enter, while a slow right click brings up the context menu. Lots of other nice stuff too. Download shareware version (has nag).

www.bubblecad.com Asuni's Bubble for AutoCad
Freeware. As cursor hovers over an Autocad (MDT, ADT, Accurender .. ) object, a description appears in a tool tip. Can be turned off when not required. Commended by McNeel.

www.autocode.com Auto-Code -CAM Software for AutoCad Demonstation
Works within AutoCAD and adds one pulldown menu. It is one of the less expensive CNC machining software package options. For Lathe, mill, punch, EDM, flame and laser work. Download a Demo (an 800kB exe file).
On-line and downloadable documentation. This software running inside AutoCad means you have a CAD/CAM system! Interesting articles, tutorials, some AutoLisp code and AutoCad programming information.

www.intercamsa.com MasterCam (Stands alone ..does not work within AutoCad)
Included for reference and comparison. They offer a Demo version.

www.wintopo.com WinTopo For Pro and Free version.
The Free only does bmp's while the Pro does tiff, jpeg and gif. Ok so create the raster as bmp! Worth trying but perhaps the free version is not as good as Scan2CAD.
What can you do with the Freeware version?
* Load BMP raster files.
* Perform raster thinning, or edge detection.
* Vectorise the thinned raster to single colour vectors.
*View the vectors overlaying the raster.
*Save the vectors to DXF or other vector formats.

www.softcover.com/shome.htm Scan2Cad by Softcover International Ltd. In England. Professional vectorisation for approx. US$150. Supposedly handles larger A0 scans above 400 dpi better than WinTopo (Pro or Free?).

www.rastervect.com ## 400 does not come up 7 July 03 ##
RasterVect Software were established in 1997. Their Web Page states 'RasterVect is a professional tools for converting raster images into vector format.'

www.galilee.co.za/vectory.htm VECTORY will convert raster images of large scale drawings up to A0 @ 600dpi, into DXF or DGN vector format. Vectory also provides a DWF drawing format. A demo can be downloaded from the web site.

www.motivesys.com For M-Color color plotting software which lets you add genuine translucent fills to AutoCAD plots. It works with raster images as well. See egallery of drawings created using M-Color. (Good! -aj)

pdf.html My repository of what I have collected about pdf.
Includes free alternatives to the ubiquitous Adobe Acrobat.
Includes suggestions on how pdf might be responsibly used to advantage.

Re: Generating PDF from CAD

"We have a number of licenses of Acrobat, but when it came to CAD we went with an adware software called PDF995 <http://www.pdf995.com > (US$9.95 to remove adware). We have set it up as a PC3 driver on our [AutoCAD] systems.

"We had our directors look at three version of the same CAD drawing, and then rank them. The results were:

1st - PDF995 created PDF file
2nd - AutoCAD drawing
3rd - Acrobat created PDF file

"This was quite a surprise, as you can imagine. There is a lot of really poxy software out there that just can't cut it compared to the real thing. PDF995 does a good job."
Caroline Clohesy -IT Support @Home

"I use PDF995 for creating PDFs from just about any application, including MicroStation. It sets up a PDF 'printer'."
Andrew Beer -New Zealand Steel

RE: pdf995
'This is a great product to send files for quick viewing to someone without CAD literacy and programs. However, I have noted that the printed versions coming out of pdf995 are not exactly to scale.'
Tony Terich -USA

(Posting)
I have approximately 200 .dwg files which needs to be converted to PDF files since I want to make an database throght the internet where it is possible to view the files. Is there any program or method for batchconversion of dwg files which is free or shareware?
(2 Responses)-See two links below.
-I used Acroplot for generation of web catalogs and sales CDs and recommend it.
-You need ghostscript, redmon and gsview.

www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost Home Page for Ghostscript, an interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF, and related software and documentation. -Apparently need Ghostscript, RedMon and GSview.

www.fraps.com For a free screen capture program by games playing enthuisiasts. Completely free. Good people, no commercial associations at all. Recommended by Paul Houlker in a MDT6 Discussion Group posting. He advocates rolling the wheel in the Edit 3DConstraints value box to generate the movement.

www.capturepad.com For CapturePad, another free screen capture package recommended by S. Dotson who posted to tell everyone that it was better than the package he paid for.

www.opendwg.org The OpenDWG Alliance.
Committed to promoting the AutoCAD .dwg format as an open industy standard for the exchange of CAD drawings. IMSI (TurboCad) is a member.

www.revit.com Revit Technology Corp. For Rivit 3.1 architectural software.
Describes geometry based "legacy" engines and change based engines with a separate critique of ADT3. I was on a winner with this ..a year or so ago I had a hard look at ADT and decided Revit was the go ..AutoDesk bought them out in Feb 2002 and announced they would use it to replace ADT!

www.cad.com.au
Australian site. Has AutoCad Lite, economic alternatives to AutoCad and other specialist CAD software. Schools with limited bugets should see the Education Section. You can order a Demo CD.

www.cadvance.com CADAVANCE. You can download Ver 6.5 for free. Other free downloads including an evaluation raster to vector converter.

www.genericcadd.com GenericCad. Kept alive here. Also leads to VisualCad, GeneralCad and others spawned from GenericCad.

www.graphisoft.com People behind ArchiCAD Ver 7 (Feb 2002). Architectural software for the Mac. They also produce a Windows version.

Aussie John's Site Page Last Updated And Links Checked: 7 July 2003

AutoCAD 3rd Party Software Or Related