SolidWorks Licenses IntelliCAD

SolidWorks 2005 claims to edit native AutoCAD drawings. In a brilliant legal-trouble-free move, SolidWorks licensed the AutoCAD-compatible IntelliCAD drawing editor from CADopia. The acknowledgement is in the Help | About dialog box.

Better than AutoCAD 2005, SolidWorks 2005 saves drawings back to version 2.5; the drawback is that IntelliCAD has failed to keep up with the rapidly advancing feature set in AutoCAD. Keep in mind that there are two versions of IntelliCAD: the cheap one lacks important code licenced from others, such as high-quality plotter drivers, VBA, rendering, and so on.

Reports a user who's seen the beta: "It looked so much like AutoCAD that I asked if they'd heard from Autodesk lawyers about it."

Why is this move legally brilliant? Autodesk is under an FTC order to not harass IntelliCAD and its employees for another few years.

Update

The IntelliCAD Technology Consortium confirms that its IntelliCAD technology is used by SolidWorks 2005 for its new DWGEditor. "When a user of SolidWorks 2005 opens a DWG based drawing, the IntelliCAD technology is invoked to provide editing capabilities in an AutoCAD-like interface."

Brief History Lesson

Over the last ten years, the IntelliCAD name took a tumultuous journey:
* Begun as an independent AM/FM software firm (located in La Mesa CA USA).
* Purchased by Softdesk (of Henniker NH) in August 1994.
* Converted into a Softdesk skunkworks project to create a secret AutoCAD-compatible engine.
* To Autodesk (San Rafael CA) via the company's acquisition of Softdesk, until ordered divested by the FTC.
* Briefly independent as Boomerang Technology (San Jose CA).
* Purchased by Visio (Seattle WA).
* Then spun off by Visio as the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium.
* And now resold under a variety of names, such as CADopia IntelliCAD (USA) and BricsCAD IntelliCAD (Belgium).

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Comments

[Mike]

I am currently loading my new Solidworks 2005 software and wanted some information on the DWGEditor and whether or not to install it. I also run AutoCAD 2004, looks to me like it will work nicely with AutoCAD. Thanks for the article.

ralphg replies:

If you have AutoCAD installed, then you don't need to install the DWGEditor.

(DWGEditor is just meant for those offices that don't have AutoCAD licenses.)

You can still import AutoCAD .dwg files into SolidWorks 2005 and earlier.

[kit]

Greetings!

The company I am presently employed has just bought a license
Solidworks. Our previous CAD software was Autodesk's CAD release 14.

My exposure to Autodesk's CAD was more on 2D, yet on some occasions, I
did some 3Ds. Your Solidworks has Drawing Editor and it operates like
Autodesk's CAD, relative to that, I would like to know if I can
uninstall the main software: SolidWorks and use only the Drawing Editor.
Is Drawing Editor a stand-alone software and not dependent on the main
Solidworks software?

I am happy that Drawing Editor can extrude polygons and make it as 3D,
which implies that I am make 3Ds the way I made it when using Autodesk's
CAD.

Your reply will be so greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Kit.

[nikolce]

import license

[Jim C.]

Recently I uninstalled a SolidWorks demo from my computer. It left an installation of DWGEditor. That's the Intellicad tool they bundle with the program to edit DWG's.

I've got tons of experience with Intellicad of all brands and versions. They are all buggy owing to the core code the consortium passes on to the vendors. (Even the consortium admitted the bugs to me in a written letter.)

Is the version in Solidworks bug free? Hardly. I found at least three really bad bugs in a 10 minute sit down. Bugs that made it close to impossible to finish the simplest of 2D drawings. Bugs that are common in every version of Intellicad I have ever evaluated.

I tried to report the bugs to Solidworks, but they don't take bug reports from anyone but their paid customers.

So I hardly think Solidworks made a "brilliant" move.

[CADDIT]

If I may respond directly to Mr. Jim C., I suggest that you look at two IntelliCAD products of note (there are other technologies that are either not IntelliCAD based or switching from IntelliCAD, I can't vouch for these).

CADDIT sells progeCAD, and we work with their development and bug testing team. I can personally vouch that this version will offer improvement over the version you have previously worked with.

China also supplies a product called ZwCAD that I hear is quite advanced as well. I would give these two a try first.

[Jim C.]

Sir:
I currently own ProgeCad 2007 Pro. It was given to me by the company for free. Why? I'd downloaded the Progesoft 2006 trial to evaluate for useage by our engineering department. I reported so many bugs in ProgeCad 2006 that they offered me a fully functional dongle activated version of ProgeCad 2007. They asked if I would like to continue reporting bugs.. I played around with it for a few months and reported additional bugs. I finally quit doing this after they stopped issuing bug fixes to 2007 and started hawking 2008. I wasn't getting anymore bug fixes from them, or even feedback on my reports. I concluded that their programmers were only interested in adding new features, and not in tracking down long existing bugs in the core code provided by the consortium.

I'd try newer versions of Intellicad, but I'm not aware of any that run on Windows 2K. That's the only OS my employer allows me to use, and I currently don't have a working PC at home.

Incidentally, some of the bugs I saw in Briscad, Progesoft, Cadopia, etc. over the years involved stuff as basic as creating two parallel lines spaced at a specified distance. Or disappearing objects. Polygons that would stop being editable. Simple stuff. It may be that Intellicad handles 3D just fine. I'll never know. I could never do useful work in 2D, and never got around to evaluating the more advanced features.

I should add however, that Autodys was one program I had considerable success with. Unfortunately, that too is no longer offered in a Win2K version.

[Sri sai vamsi]

IntelliCAD History and developments are very interesting to learn and help us to understand the clear foundation of IntelliCAD software from its beginning to where it is today.

During the early 1990s, a software product with name IntelliCAD was started by a software company in San Diego, USA. The primary aim of this software product was to empower ADE (AutoCAD Data Extension) technology. Later this product was sold to Autodesk and it became an integral part of Autodesk’s MEP Software.

https://www.actcad.com/

https://actcad.com/blog/intellicad-history-developments/