VersaCAD Tips 'n Tricks

VersaCAD Tips, Tricks and News. CPL Programing and other CAD-musings. This Blog is Independently maintained by Jim Longley with no affiliation to VersaCAD or Archway. See "Introduction" at bottom. =:-}

VersaCAD Does What BigTime CAD Can't!

Having used AutoCAD since the R13 release, I have dabbled some in Solids construction and the “extraction” of orthographic views and sections. And I must say (Don’t listen Tom and Mike L) I like the ability to “model once, view many ways” – so-to-speak.

That said, I recently felt the urge (Nostalgia? Old age? ) to prove I was still a Drafting-person, able to develop orthographic views and sections ‘manually’. The assignment was to document a machined hydraulic manifold block.. Diligently I laid out the views, projected the section information. Satisfied I could still Draft – as an art form – I now wanted to add a little flair with an isometric view.

Image Export of Completed Drawing From VersaCAD 2003.9

Oh! Now I wished I had ‘Modeled” the part. It would have been a simple matter of adding another viewport to my paperspace layout and viewing the model as an isometric. Wait! Where was my desire to “draft”! – Gotten lazy, that’s where. In AutoCAD you can draw with an iso grid, but I already had the drawing done as it were. I didn’t want to sort-of redraw the project – again. VersaCAD!!

At this point, all I had was a copy of VersaCAD 7.0, running at EGA resolution under Windows 2000. Fine. Good. You use what you have. Saved my AutoCAD drawing as an R12 DXF file, translated and opened in VersaCAD. Used the Group View commands to construct the Top, Left and Right views from the already-constructed ortho views. Grouped the Iso’ed stuff, Filer/Save/Group and got the basic isometric view back into my AutoCAD drawing for clean-up and detailing. Saved a lot of [manual] work. Who says old CAD systems die! They just keep chugging away, doing what they do – sometimes better than the new programs, just without the fluff or eye-candy interfaces.

Posted by: versacad at January 28, 2004 00:55 | link | comments |
sketch

Introduction

I am employed with a large Pulp and Paper Mill in Nova Scotia, Canada

We started using VersaCAD about 1988 with Ver 5.4, followed by 5.7, then VersaCAD/386. Original workstation was a Compaq 386/20 with an unheard of 4 Megs of RAM and a honkin big 20 MB hard drive. This was a dual monitor set-up with a 12" mono text/system monitor and a 19" graphics monitor driven by an Nth Engine Card. Input was via 12" Summagraphics tablet with 16 button puck. Oh! how far things have come!

We progressed with VersaCAD 6.0, 7.0 and had, but never implemented 8.0. I consider 6.0 to be the last major upgrade to VersaCAD until its recent return to the Lazear's and Archway. The intervening years were stagnant for VersaCAD, following several years corporate turn-overs. VersaCAD 7 was 6.0 with an added 3^rd party package for Network Utilities – Netutils! Vcad 8.0 did not seem to add enough to worth uncrunching/crunching custom menus

Also about this time many local engineering consulting firms with which we did business started to migrate to AutoCAD – the hand writing seemed to be on the wall. Rather than be left behind, isolated, we too jump ship, starting with AutoCAD R13. Truth be known, had we not felt the need to mesh/interact with the rest of the world, we would probably be still happily motoring along with VersaCAD – doing what we do… 2d drawings and electrical schematic (even less so these days with downsizing and contracting out)

That said, I believe that VersaCAD still has a place in life. Its basic “windowization” now makes it usable on today’s Operating Systems. Price seems a bit high to me (least in Canadian $$$'s), yet there is something appealing about its simplicity – the smooth single-letter flow up and down the menu structure. Amongst many users it would develop as almost VersaCAD-speak – you know… “Group Build New Yes Fence”, “Inquire Measure Measure”.

I have recently received a copy of VersaCAD 2003.9 and intend to share thoughts, tips, tricks and some CPL programming via this blog. I hope you enjoy this and feel free to added your comments.

JimL

Posted by: versacad at January 27, 2004 00:47 | link | comments |