Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1997 - 66

Elbin Cleveland

CAD on PCs: MiniCAD takes on AutoCAD
So you're ready to jump into CAD (computer assisted drafting) but you
don't know which software is right for you. What's more, you're trying to
figure out how you can afford the high price. Arelative newcomer to the
PC platform, MiniCAD from Diehl Graphsoft Inc., is a powerful CAD
package worthy of your consideration, and it comes at a relatively low
cost. It draws, it does 3D, and it does Windows. MiniCAD has a multitude
of capabilities for producing highly accurate drawings as well as some
unique capabilities that are exciting, intriguing, and sometimes baffling.
This two-part review is intended to introduce MiniCAD to those outside
the Mac universe, and highlight some of the new features in release 14 of
the ubiquitous AutoCAD from Autodesk, Inc.. If the muse is \\1th me, I
may even help you to decide which package is right for you, or whether
it's worth upgrading if you already use one of them.

/liniCAD version 7 for Windows
Even though it is the new kid on the PC block, MiniCAD has actually been
around for some time on the Mac platform where it now stands as one of
the leading CAD packages. During the life cycle of MiniCAD 6.0, Diehl
Graphsoft Inc. released a Windows version of MiniCAD. The PC platform
version actually utilizes a mixture of Mac and Windows code. The programers have cleverly \Hitten new Windows code for speed sensitive portions
of the program, and have recompiled existing Mac code for the rest.

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TD&T

There are some features of MiniCAD in the Mac version that are not yet
available in the Windows version. The most notable one is the ability to
customize the menus and tool palettes. The left mouse button is the only
mouse button that works in MiniCAD for Windows which means no right
clicking for cursor menus or other command uses of the right button. In
addition, there are no tool tips (much like balloons on the Mac) which
appear when the cursor is over an icon-something Windows 95 users
have come to expect. As a longtime AutoCAD user, I had to spend a week
or so learning how to use tills program because it works quite differently
from AutoCAD. However, once I got to know what all of the icons did and
learned how to work with MiniCAD's drawing environment, I discovered
a versatile and powerful CAD progranl.
MiniCAD has two drawing em1ronments: 2D and 3D. The 2D drawing environment is strictly for traditional drafting while the 3D environment sports a \\1de variety of 3D drawing and \1sualization capabilities. It
would take an entire issue of TD&T to do justice to the 3D capabilities of
tltis program, so tltis review \\ill focus on its drafting abilities. Two-dimensional objects in MiniCAD include lines, arcs, ovals (circles), rectangles, polygons, text, dimensions, and symbols. Each object has handles
associated with it that allow various editing tasks to be performed sinlply
by using the selection tool. The editing possibilities vary \\1th the type of
object selected. The ability to alter tlle attributes of a selected object is a

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