DenebaCAD 2.0

by Deneba

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00002S71M
• Item model number: F9325-0000-EN
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,592 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

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Brand-new, full fledged, computer-aided design (CAD) applications for the Mac don't come down the pike every day, despite the Mac's obvious superiority as a design tool. (Well, obvious to everyone but the legions of bent-backed drafting serfs and their whip-cracking managers laboring in DOS-based, AutoCAD-only shops.) So Deneba, whose Canvas illustration program has always sported the most CAD-like precision of the major drawing apps, deserves a gold-plated pocket protector for daring to release DenebaCAD, a 2D/3D CAD package aimed mainly at architects and interior/exterior designers.

Not that there aren't other excellent drafting programs out there for the Mac. DenebaCAD's chief competition, Diehl Graphsoft's market-leading MiniCAD 7, also lists for $795, and it is a mature, polished product with a deep feature set. But DenebaCAD has its strengths too: It offers a wide range of tightly integrated built-in capabilities, including simple 2D drafting, complex 3D modeling, and materials tracking and cost-analysis, within a smooth interface that technically oriented designers will master easily.

The program's single best feature is the well-thought-out 3D Render module. It produces close-to-photorealistic renderings, flythrough QuickTime animations, QuickTime VRs, and anaglyphic stereo images. If you've struggled with the clunky, ugly 3D in most other low-to-mid-range CAD programs, you'll appreciate the ease with which DenebaCAD produces quite handsome images, complete with textures, natural and artificial lighting, shadows, reflections, and transparency. Rendering is reasonably fast, especially if you've got a 604e-based Mac.

DenebaCAD's Draft mode creates 2D orthographic drawings, the heart of all CAD work. Draft sports the full complement of line- and spline-drawing tools, with fileting, chamfering, extensions, auto-dimensioning, and a wide range of snap-to-grid options. The SmartMouse, similar to drawing wizards in other mid-to-high-end CAD programs, identifies relevant snaps, intersections, tangents, and parallels as you draw. Unlimited drawing layers are easily managed using the Layer Manager floater. Dimensioning in ANSI, DIN, ISO, JIS, and BS-380 is floating-point precise to 16 places. Tool and info bars give the tech stats needed to execute precise work. A single drawing can be viewed in as many open windows as you like, each showing a different angle, perspective, or magnification. You can output drawings as parametric text for import into a spreadsheet, database, or word processor, where specifications can be edited. Edited files can be imported and turned into drawings.

Use the 3D Sculpt mode to extrude 2D drawings into 3D, or work directly with polygonal 3D tools to build models from scratch. You can extrude lines along any free angle to make planes, or use sweep and spin operations to make complex shapes such as spiral staircases. Smart Boolean operations allow you to create new models by combining models or subtracting them from each other. The program remembers the original shapes of models, even after they are combined, so you can recall and reshape them at any time. The best part of DenebaCAD is that it doesn't make you jump through hoops to move up or down a dimension - it's relatively easy to generate 3D extrusions from 2D plans, or derive 2D working drawings from 3D models.

DenebaCAD is a powerful CAD program, but it's not perfect. Some fit and finish work remains. When you try to open 3D models, you're asked to find oddly misspelled textures that aren't anywhere in the package. Models can't always find associated textures even if they are in a nested folder. Projects sometimes open to a blank screen, forcing you to change the view to see your drawing. And the program lacks several of the high-end capabilities of MiniCAD, such as true solids modeling - a necessity for mechanical and product design. For now, MiniCAD is still the best mid-range choice for all-around CAD on the Mac. But for architectural design studios, DenebaCAD is a strong contender. -- Steven Anzovin

Good News: Strong architectural 3D modeling and rendering. Solid interface. Rich toolset. Price is right. Bad News: No solids modeling. Needs a bug-fix revision.

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