DataCAD

With the advancement in computer technology, more and more precision tools and applications are developed to make planning fast, efficient and accessible to a large public. In construction and design, specialized programs like DataCAD give you the possibility to easily set up sketches with an abundance of creation and editing tools, saving your work for later processing or directly printing it out.

After a few minutes into all the application has to offer, you probably still have more than half exploring to do. You might feel overwhelmed by the number of specialized creation and adjustment tools.

The center area represents you main workspace, with a default top-down wireframe view. Creating and adjusting elements is easily done with your mouse, but the palette of tools is a little oddly implemented and selecting an element being rather difficult.

Leaving aside the simple, but poor overall design, the application lets you dive deep into creating landscapes, architectural design or 3D objects. With multiple cameras that let you set angle even in rendering mode you can analyze your model from multiple perspectives.

The application puts a large variety of drawing tools at your disposal. Color can be set for each element, while precision being enhanced thanks to rulers and curve designing functions. The grid also plays an important role, with the possibility to have objects snapped, even at certain angle point.

What's more, you can also use the application for architectural design. Specialized tools for creating wall elements, doors and windows are available. Textures can be attributed to objects, with the possibility to fully customize according to diffuse, ambient, opacity and more adjustments.

When your work is done, several export options are available so you can further process your project in other applications. This comes in handy because amongst others, available export formats are DWG, DXF, RAY, 3DS, STL and even SketchUp. Not only that, but a plain rendered image can also be saved on your hard disk drive.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that DataCAD is not strictly designed to a specific domain, but more of a multipurpose precision tool. The overall implementation leaves a little something to be desired, with some accommodation time being required, but once you get the hang of it, the application is a powerful design studio.