Hot Door / CADtools 3

[Marko_Jeras@adobeforums.com]

Can anybody advise me (not) to buy it from their web site?

Is there anything better for drawing CAD in Illustrator CS?

Looking forward to your answer. Thank you for help. All the best,

Marko

[Phosphor@adobeforums.com]

Don't know about version 3, but I love version 2 (I use it with Illustrator 8 in OS 9.2.2 Classic environment).

I don't know much about other CAD plugins or apps for Macs, but I know that CADtools does everything I need it for, and is rock-stable.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

CADTools is supposed to very good easy to learn I have tried the demo or maybe I use to own it I don't remember.

There is a thing call CADIntosh as well from the people who market Graphic Converter
and there are higher end CAD programs for the Mac such as Vector Works als0 very good.

[Danny_Baronian@adobeforums.com]

If you like Illustrator and are proficient with it, to my knowledge there is nothing better for illustrator than CADTools. It's a clean, solid, refined program.

I'm currently on OSX in Ill 10, with CADTools 2. It runs fine and will probably do everything you require within illustrator.

Don't know anything about CS. From all I've heard, I'll wait for Ill 12.

[James_Talmage@adobeforums.com]

First off, CADTools 3 is not "rock stable."
As is common with 3rd party plug-ins, it has its share of bugs. On Windows(don't know about Mac), I found out immediately after installling it you need to be very careful about how you dock its palettes. Some palettes cannot be un-docked--or even opened--after being docked in certain ways.(Thankfully, re-installing the plug-in resets things, and HotDoors assures me a fix is in the works.)

This is not to disparage CADTools, HotDoors, or any other plug-in author. It's just part of my general outlook toward building dependency upon 3rd party add-ons for functionality which 1) is frequently essential to my work and 2)really should be part of the host program anyway. If you decide to go ahead and commit to such dependency, you must also be willing to accept the uncertainty of how well the add-on will maintain parity with new versions.
AI users have sometimes had to wait long times for their favorite plug-ins to be updated after a new release of AI broke compatability. Not to mention the expense of having to repeatedly buy individual features for AI which often come built into its competitors.

All that said, if you need dimensioning tools and custom scales in AI (and most everyone does--that's why I think Adobe should add them), CADTools 3 can deliver.

CADTools 3 is significantly more valuable than the previous version, because it now includes support for axonometric drawing. The earlier "isometric" features of Hot Doors' Perspective committed basic errors. So far, the CADTools 3 "isometric" tools look to be correct. Moreover, they are actually useful. I've seen attempts at isometric aids which really did nothing that couldn't be done just as efficiently without them, given a basic understanding of isometric drawing and Illustrator's Actions palette.

Simple on-axis isometric construction is easy without any add-ons. Dimetric and trimetric require more tedious setup. Although CADTools 3 calls the feature set "Isometric", it lets you just as quickly set up the environment for any dimetric or trimetric orientation, too.

But few things we draw consist entirely of right angled edges and planes. Where the real utility of an axonometric aid is measured is when you need to find correct angle and length for off-axis thrust lines, object edges and proportions for ellipses. Although it could offer more complete and direct assistance for that (I'd like to see an Isometric Line Tool, and for both it and the Isometric Ellipse tool to have a live spherical readout), CADTools 3 at least enables you to construct simple and compound rotations with reasonable efficiency. If you do much axonometric drawing (or want to), you should find it quite handy, as I expect to.

JET

[Marko_Jeras@adobeforums.com]

Thank you all very much for valuable answers. I will give it a try, as I find it to be the right tools for what I want to do. All the best,

Marko