Product Reviews

Three-dimensional models may be great, sexy tools for wowing clients, but to get something built, you have to go back to old-fashioned working drawings: plans, sections and elevations, and bills of quantities. In fact, many designers still exclusively work with 2D drawings on the computer, leaving 3D and concept work to those old standbys: cardboard and pencil.

MacDraft, from UK-based Microspot, is for producing accurate working drawings on a Mac. The program itself has a very simple interface, but one that conceals a great deal of power. It also ships with that rarest of beasts these days - a full, printed manual. Kudos to Microspot for this, as it's a decently written one, at that.

On startup you're presented with a set of two palettes (Tools and Attributes) and a drawing window. More palettes are available (Show Size, Resize, and so on) and you can choose to have all open palettes saved so they're there the next time you start MacDraft. Open windows can also be tiled, giving an overview of open documents. Palettes remain free-floating, though it would be nice to have an option that lets you dock all open palettes. Also some palettes (Accessory and Align, for example) are arranged horizontally, while others are arranged vertically, for no apparent reason. Allowing the user more control here would make arranging workspace more efficient.

MacDraft's drawing tools will be instantly familiar: lines, arcs (including Bezier), circles, ellipses, but there are also more CAD-specific options, such as the Parallel Line tool (for drawing walls with thickness). However, MacDraft only supports click-drag line drawing and doesn't give the option to draw using the click-click (startpoint, endpoint) method - which it really should.

The aforementioned Parallel line tool has options for automatically healing wall joins, which can speed things up, but a Parallel-line object must be decomposed into single lines before this can happen (with an intervening Alert dialog). Closed shapes can be filled,

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and version 5.5 takes advantage of Apple's Quartz engine (hence the Quartz Edition tag) to offer non-dithered fills, transparency and even correct on-screen rendering of line widths below one point.

Sizing up

As well as the standard drawing functions, MacDraft has a few tricks up its sleeve. For example, linking maintains the relationship between two objects: resizing one will automatically resize another -a great time-saver. Dimension lines, for example, are linked to an object by default. Resize the object and any dimensions will automatically update (dimensions are also implemented to ANSI standard).

Objects can be live-resized by dragging on their handles, or they can be more accurately resized by typing numerical values into the Resize palette. Another time-saver is the use of symbol libraries for repeatedly-used items: windows, doors, furniture, planting, and so on.

Objects defined in MacDraft can be added to existing symbol libraries or form the basis of new ones. The tutorial urges the use of Microspot's Media Assistant (a separate app to browse symbol libraries), but each time you use it, you're badgered to upgrade to the full version. The older Symbol Library browser can still be used and is an integral part of the browser, but it's clear from the documentation that future versions will rely on the Media Assistant.

Efficient panning and zooming are essential in any CAD program, where the current window might show only a small percentage of the drawing. MacDraft lets you save named views of the drawing at the current Pan/Zoom setting, a feature not too common in 2D CAD apps. This greatly aids jumping from one part of a document to the other.

MacDraft supports Layers, allowing related areas of a project - mechanical, electrical, structural - to be grouped and viewed individually, or greyed out to act as templates for other drawings. Layers can also be used as the basis for slide shows.

Drawings are only part of the story in production materials, and MacDraft also gives the option of associating data with each object, so that reports can be generated from a drawing. This allows you to easily generate documents such as bills of quantities. As objects are changed, their entries in the reports are automatically updated, and data can be exported as tab-delimited files.

Despite having a modest price, MacDraft packs in some heavyweight features and can easily handle complex projects in small workgroups, and the new Quartz features are welcome. But more attention to its interface oddities would provide some much-needed polish.