CAD CAM Software Information Hub

Sydney Australia, May 1 2008 – CADDIT announced release of the T-Flex CAD CAM CAE CNC software platform to Australia and New Zealand. T-Flex seamlessly integrates complete parametric 3D solid, surface, dynamic motion modeling and FEA into one single easy-to-use program. T-Flex also offers extensive CNC manufacturing tools for milling, lathe turning, wire EDM, drilling, etching and laser cutting. - 4 months ago

Sydney Australia, March 25 2008 – CADDIT announced the world-wide release of their newest IntelliCAD integration project, progeCAM CNC 2008. progeCAM bundles two key long-standing packages: progeCAD 2008 Professional and Dolphin PartMaster CNC. Engineers move from CAD to CAM using a special IntelliCAD module from CADDIT that seamlessly combines the two powerful applications at one special price. - 5 months ago

AutoCAD without AutoCAD? Youtube is hosting this video trailer for our upcoming "progeCAD Action" video series. These videos should answer many of the questions our new users have had about CAD drafting, as well as indroducing someof us to advanced functionality like Etrack (Otrack), XREFs, VBA, AutoLISP customization and more. Visit the CADDIT CADCAM3D Youtube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/cadcam3d/ to see how! - 6 months ago

Sydney Australia, February 05 2008 – CADDIT announced a new partnership to distribute 3D translation technology for TransMagic, Inc. CADDIT is now the national distributor for all TransMagic “plug-in”, desktop and workgroup solutions for CAD viewing, markup and translation. The agreement between TransMagic, Inc and CADDIT Pty Ltd benefits Australian companies that receive CAD files from different systems, but lack either the licenses or expertise “in house” to reliably read them all. - 6 months ago

Dolphin PartMaster is low cost CNC machinists software for milling, lathe turning and wire EDM which is supported and sold by CADDIT. This web page includes a number of video CAD CAM tutorials from the manufacturer.Industry CNC machinists, educators and universities alike will now benefit from a completely new manufacturer CNC information website from PartMaster for training. The site includes new videos demonstrating CAD, CAM CNC milling tutorials, lathe, wire EDM and 3D CAM. Full personal online training will also be offered shortly.The new videos include numerous practical examples of using PartMaster Level 1 2 and 3 software to create Text Engraving, Face Milling , Thread milling, Contouring and more. PartMaster has a variety of applications for tooling, CNC water jet, flame and laser cutting, wood and furniture manufacturing and electronics.CADDIT continues to support and sell PartMaster at a special price to the Asia Pacific region. For AutoCAD users, CADDIT has also developed a live interface between progeCAD advanced IntelliCAD and PartMaster. Users can select entities to be machined from any AutoCAD DWG or DXF file and choose to import those directly into either PartMaster CAD for further preprocessing or PartMaster CAM mill lathe or EDM. There is also a video tutorial of our progeCAM bundle on YouTube. - 2 days ago

Strange as it seems, Chinese phishing scams are taking a new twist: selling fake "IntelliCAD"! According to a reliable source of the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium (ITC), a new site was launched on servers in Texas without visible name or contact details except "Rolek Ltd" claiming to legally sell "IntelliCAD". In fact, no such company has any affiliation with the ITC. Possibly the work of Asian hackers using a broken and stolen version of the source code, the site was turned to the ITC legal team who had "Rolek's" site www. smart-dwg.com immediately suspended.It is uncertain how many customers were defrauded by the scam before this site was suspended:Ways to protect yourself from fraud IntelliCAD sites:Does the site display proper contact details (Real company name, VAT or Registration number, address, names of corporate directors and phone numbers)? Perhaps make the phone call to verify any information shown.Is the site listed as a distributor of IntelliCAD products for the country in question (see lists such as http://www.progesoft.com/compra/compra.asp?&abspage=1&lang=eng&start=&showcoupon=&ver=2008 for progeCAD, other manufacturers are listed at http://www.intellicad.org/members/index.php )Does the price seem too good to be true?How is technical support handled? A reputable distributor always supports his product.What does research about the company turn up (i.e. Google Search)? If the company seems unknown, there is reason to be suspicious.The tremendous success of progeCAD as a legal option to AutoCAD LT DWG file and design compatibility has caused illegal attempts to confuse and defraud unsuspecting users. We hope this information will be helpful for those approached by such illegal sites. - 2 weeks ago

The cross-platform Windows-Linux CAD for 3D mechanical design has released 2008 version 3.0. VariCAD is ideal for machine, jig, fixture and small project design.New Features Include:- Implementation of Unicode. The new version supports using fonts from anotherlanguages (e.g. Japanese, Chinese, Russian etc.) and special characters.- Improved DWG/DXF file compatibility- More convenient system settings- Improvements in BOM- and moreVariCAD can be downloaded an used free for 30 days before buying a license HERE. Please contact CADDIT with questions regarding this CAD program. - 2 weeks ago

T-FLEX CAD CAM is a PLM software solution for industry, machinists, marine and vehicle system product design. T-FLEX offers integrated free-form-parametric modelling, FEA, kinematics simulation and CNC manufacturing for mult-iaxis milling, lathe, wire EDM, flame and laser cutting, punching, drilling and more. It also features a full set of sheet metal tools and an large 2D and 3D standard parts library of nuts and bolts, etc. Users can create their own custom part templates and feature definition windows to increase engineering efficiency even more. Functionality of the T-FLEX CAD system rivals far more expensive platforms like Pro Engineer, Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, and Solid Edge.This impressive suite of integrated CAD CAM solutions is available to schools and universities even lower cost than its already-affordable commercial price. This program allows schools, TAFE and universities to bring innovative parametric 2D drafting and 3D modeling technology directly into their classrooms. Applicants should send CADDIT a message HERE with description of their engineering, engineering technology, or design program and an overview of how they will use T-FLEX CAD in their curriculum. We will reply with further details.CADDIT is also very pleased to remind individual student users of our FREE 3D CAD STUDENT VERSION. Of course, it is illegal to use T-FLEX CAD Student Edition or Educational license for commercial purposes. When you download and install T-FLEX CAD Student Edition you have 30 days to register the product, for free! After that there is no time limit on its usage. Technical support on the product is not provided. Students wanting T-FLEX student version may download CAD software HERE.Limitations of the T-FLEX CAD student version (important):File format is incompatible with the commercial release. Files saved in T-FLEX CAD Student Edition cannot be opened in commercial T-FLEX CAD with the exception of special Academic license provided only to the certified academic institutions. Academic license allows opening documents from T-FLEX CAD Student Edition but cannot convert them to the format of commercial T-FLEX CAD.Printing capabilities are limited. Most of customizations options are not available, printing page size is limited to A4 format, special text is printed on the border.Limited export/import functions. Export is limited to bitmap formats; import of Parasolid format is not available.BOM is not supported. Document protection control functionality is not accessible. Integration with T-FLEX DOCs software is not supported. Finite Elements Analysis results are limited. Parasolid models insertion is disabled. External add-on applications based on T-FLEX Open API are not supported. "Technical Support" command is not available. Fragments "detailing" feature is disabled. Animation screen play command is switched off. More information about how T-FLEX CAD CAM can work for business, schools or students is available on our CAD software website. - 3 weeks ago

Although not really CAD software programs, it is worth mentioning that there are several FREE graphic software programs which will allow you to edit photos and diagrams without the purchase of Microsoft Visio or Adobe Photoshop.There are basically two types of 2D images: raster and vector. Raster images are "bitmap" pictures like JPEG and PNG without math definitions. Vector graphics are more mathematical depictions of geometry and formulas such as lines, arcs and conic splines. Some applications actually combine both of these two data sets in their native file format. My favorite application for raster image editing is free. It is GIMP.Gimp is a large suite of free raster image editing tools (similar to Photoshop) which can edit, convert and enhance most popular raster image formats. Its functions include smooth image scaling and mode conversion, as well as path editing, selection tools, macros and the list just goes on and on. There are many books about GIMP. It runs on Linux and MAC OS X, as well.Another handy tool to download for free image editing like Photoshop is Paint.NET. It downloads smaller than GIMP and doesn't depend on GTK but uses Microsoft .NET 2.0, so it only runs in Windows. It doesn't support near as many formats and tools as GIMP. Lighter weight and easy to use, however, some still prefer Paint.NET over GIMP so it's worth mentioning here.A useful tool for free vector graphics and diagraming similar to Visio is Inkscape. Some confuse Visio and Inkscape to be CAD programs. It's an easy mistake to make. What they really are is vector graphics tools, mainly for diagram creation. But Inkscape can also edit combined raster and vector files such as Acrobat PDF (let's see Visio do that). It favors open standards like SVG but can also read DXF. If you don't have Inkscape yet and are reading this Blog, you should go download it. Simple as that. Another new project similar to Adobe Illustrator is Creative Docs .NET. At this time, the project lacks data exchange with other software, but it is still worth having in a pinch and it's free. - 4 weeks ago

progeCAD and similar products continue to win user confidence as low cost substitutes for overpriced CAD. And American corporation "Autodesk" is getting mad. Passive resistance to DWG clone technologies has developed into all out war, both in the court room and in the board room.The Open Design Alliance (ODA) is a nonprofit consortium of CAD companies cooperating in a rare way to clone one of the few major reasons people still pay Autodesk prices - the binary DWG AutoCAD file format. The ODA posts regular updates of their robust DWG and DGN libraries on a website for member use in their own software - software like progeCAD.When Autodesk itself was invited to join the ODA, the company declined. Gradually Autodesk began a long series of legal attacks on the ODA. On November 13 2006 they officially filed suit for their "Trusted DWG technology" which superficially warns users about opening DWG files that didn't come from their own AUD$6000 CAD system. They are also litigating for ownership of the letters DWG as a trademark belonging to Autodesk. The problem is that the USA trademark office doesn't recognise file extensions as "trademarkable". DWG is really just another file extension like ".doc" or ".txt".Meanwhile, Autodesk finally realeased their own "RealDWG" toolkit to compete with the ODA, the caveat being that any applicant must meet with Autodesk's approval as a developer that will not compete with any of the Autodesk high-priced product line. It was quite an effective move to begin cherry-picking "realDWG" converts from important ODA contributors, undermining it. ODA gets its funding from its members.Autodesk has quickly made their next move in this apperantly two-prong gambit to weaken the ODA. Following at the heals of the completed million-dollar Autodesk assimilation of Moldflow, Autodesk has announced a new "cooperation" with their next unlikely target, Bentley Systems(Microstation). At one time, Bentley was a serious AEC market competitor. Then, in February 2008, a key Bentley developer changed sides to Autodesk. Strangley, Bentley Systems has now been approved for use of the Autodesk "RealDWG" toolkit. A press release was posted celebrating this "Advance in AEC Software Interoperability". Now think, would you let your worst enemy watch your house while you were away? The truth is that Autodesk is as unconcerned in promoting real file interoperability as they have ever been. The endgame in this gambit really stood later in Bentley's own reaction, stating that their ODA was "now irrelevant". There is further speculation that Bentley Systems is next in line for Autodesk assimilation.progeCAD is a product that reads, writes, edits and converts Autodesk DWG format files in a CAD interface very similar to AutoCAD 2002. Some consider it a clone. Recently this product has become very stable and robust so that even large companies are saving thousands by replacing expensive AutoCAD installations with progeCAD.It is obvious that Autodesk is now at a de facto state of all out war against such products. Should they win, businesses will have no choice but to pay big AutoCAD prices. My gut tells me that Autodesk is scheming something parallel to their 2010 release to finish the ODA for good. Is the world's best hope is that the EU will take the same anti-trust motions against Autodesk as they have against Microsoft? Maybe the ODA needs to move to Europe? - 5 weeks ago