CAD Features

3D AND LIGHTWEIGHT POLYLINES, BLOCKS, XREFS, MULTILINE TEXT
A 3D polyline (unlike a lightweight polyline) exists anywhere in a 3D space. The vertices can be edited later by dragging nodes or entering values on the property bar. Lightweight Polylines draw all segments on a plane (the drawing plane). A block (also known as a symbol) is a pre-defined and named collection of entities which you maybe loaded from another drawing and inserted into the current drawing. You will be given the option to select the block, specify the angle and scale, and also rotate the block before inserting it. The External Reference Manager (XRef Manager) allows you to edit the list of linked drawings. XRef’s may be “loaded” and “unloaded” as necessary. Add a text paragraph for more than one line of text by defining a box that will contain the text and then entering the text using the Multiline Text Editor. You may apply formatting to parts of the text using the in the Multiline Text Editor.

3D FUNCTIONALITY, MESHES, FACES, SOLID SHAPES & RENDERING
The CAD module allows 3D rendering with smooth shading, perspective view and hidden line removal. You can also view your design in a split modelspace or work on any view (top/side/iso) at the same time.

EXTENDED MODIFY FUNCTIONS SUCH AS STRETCH, MIRROR, CUT/RUB, ROTATE 3D, MULTI-LINE TRIM, SNIP, ALIGN ETC
Stretch: one or more vertices of an element can be moved, leaving the rest unchanged using the polyline selection method.

Mirror: You may select the plane about which to mirror a selection set and indicate the point about which to perform the mirror.

Cut/Rub: Cut and remove a portion of an entity by selecting the entity to cut and rub and then indicating the two points at which to cut and remove the portion between the indicated points.

And many other modify functions such as rotate 3D, multi-line Trim, Snip, Align, etc.

MULTIPLE PARALLEL LINES WITH DEFINABLE STYLES, LINE-ARC-LINE
Draw up to 10 parallel lines with specified offsets using multi lines. The multiline will use the current multiline style. The process of drawing is the same as for Lightweight Polyline except you can specify a radius for each corner.

The Line-Arc-Line function allows you to draw a series of lines with arcs with a specified radius at the bend points.

DATABASE ATTRIBUTES LINKED TO ENTITIES, REPLACE DATA ITEMS
You can link drawing entities to database records containing attributes using the Database Linking dialog. The Database Linking dialog is "non-modal" so you can continue working on your drawing while it is open.

CONVERT GEOMETRY INTO DRAWING ENTITIES FOR COMPLEX SHAPES
Geometry circles can be converted into circle or arc entities. Use Geometry Trace Over to convert geometry to chained arcs and lines.

POWERFUL SELECTION FILTERS SELECT ENTITIES BASED ON ATTRIBUTES
The selection filters allow you to set certain limits to the selection criteria. i.e. select circles with pen 3.

SPECIALISED TOOLKITS THAT GREATLY ENHANCE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY:
The Mechanical, Architectural, Structural and Survey toolkits are all included in AllyCAD and have been designed to speed up essential but time-consuming tasks relevant to these CAD disciplines.

Survey - SG diagram, general and sectional plans, COGO
The Survey Toolkit allows easy generation of Survey General Diagrams, General Plans and sectional title plans.

Architectural - makes drawing houses and buildings faster
The Architectural Toolkit ships with SABS 0400-1990 building standards for speedy design of building plans with plan, elevation and sectional views.

Mechanical - includes fasteners, shafts, gears, parts list
The Mechanical Toolkit Provides fast and effective drawing of common mechanical components such as bolts, nuts, screws, shafts, gears and flanges. Annotation functions for welds, tolerances and surface finish are also included.

Structural - hot / cold rolled steel sections & building grid
The Structural Toolkit allows speedy drawing of building grids with centre lines and column bases, and can also be used to draw structural steel sections, including I and H sections, channels, angles, plate girders, lipped zeds and top hats.

ENHANCED BITMAP CAPABILITY LOADS MULTIPLE LARGE IMAGES
The CAD module is known for its lightening speed of handling huge images. You can add multiple large geo-referenced images such as orthophotos or cadastral backdrops to view the spatial relationship of your design to other manmade or natural features. Easily rotate, clip, georeference your images with brightness/contrast control. Redraws are quick and the software supports: JPEG (jpg), JPEG2000 (jp2), Windows Bitmap (bmp), LizardTech MrSID (sid), ERMapper ECW (ecw), Portable Network Graphics (png), Graphic Interchange Format (gif), Tagged Image File Format (tiff), TrueVision Targa (tga) and Personal Computer Exchange (pcx), which should cover just about any image you may have.

MAXIMUM COMPATIBILITY WITH THE LATEST DWG/DXF FORMATS
Knowledge Base is a founder member of the Open Design Alliance and, as such, our inside knowledge of the DWG drawing structure ensures high compatibility when loading and saving DWG and DXF drawing formats. In addition we also support loading of Caddie CEX, Arcview SHP, Microstation DGN and Ultimate Cad UCX files. This gives you unprecedented flexibility to move between drawings without having to worry about incompatibilities and data exchange problems.

3D OBJECTS
Civil Designer CAD module comes with the following 3D drawing functions using polygon meshes:

Box Cone Dome

Sphere Pyramid Tube

3D SURFACES
You can create 3D surface meshes using the following functions:

Ruled Surface Revolved Surface

Extruded Surface Tesselated Surface

ANNOTATIVE TEXT SCALING FEATURE
Civil Designer CAD module allows you to specify text, dimensions, arrows and block inserts as “mm on paper” regardless of scale. When you add a layout viewport, it will automatically configure the viewport such that annotative objects in the viewport are drawn at the same size in “mm on paper” as they appear in the drawing.

PRODUCTION DRAWINGS UPDATE ON THE FLY
Our system will also automatically generate all your final plans as dynamically updating layouts which will reflect all drafting changes instantly so that your design and production drawings are always in sync.

FULL DWG COMPATIBILITY
By full DWG compatibility, we mean simply opening an existing DWG drawing or easily converting your CAD drawing into the DWG format with no loss of data and with just a few clicks. No "work arounds" are required because the data structures are identical in terms of the design. This includes XRefs, Layouts with viewports and styles. The Civil Designer CAD module can also read DGN, CEX, UCX, DRG and SHP files.

DATABASE LINKAGE
Link drawing entities to external database records containing attributes. You can therefore store your data in an external database and display up-to-date data on your drawings without editing the drawings.

The AllyCAD Toolkits

The AllyCAD specialised toolkits have been designed to speed up essential but time-consuming tasks relevant to the various CAD disciplines. The toolkits are included in the Civil Designer CAD module.

GENERAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
The General Toolkit contains innovative functionality specifically designed to speed up your design time. Read more..

• Print multiple drawings and esaily edit your batch print list
• Convert multiple files between DRG, DWG, DXF and CEX formats
• Read Excel spreadsheets and insert the data directly into your drawing
• Insert the date and the visible layer information on the plot
• Quickly divide lines and angles into a specified number of segments
• Instantly calculate total line length (eg cables /pipes on a layer)
• Hide or set a layer by clicking on any entity in the layer
• Easily convert all line types and pens to normal line and pen numbers
• Write any text onto any arc with a specified text height and pen
• Quickly draw a revision cloud to focus attention on design areas
• Easily draw centrelines, chamfered rectangles and filleted rectangles

ARCHITECTURAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Ships with SABS 0400-1990 building standards for speedy design of building plans. Read more..

• Set, edit, load and save building standard files
• Easy draughting of external and internal walls for buildings
• Roof line insertion for drawing roof elevation and cross sections
• Fully customizable symbol library in easy referenced structure
• Easy editing, saving and reloading of internal/external wall types
• Draw horizontal & vertical cross sections from existing plan view
• Easy adding of plan and elevations of staircase to drawings

Showcases & Testimonials

A LONG STANDING HISTORY "I am considered to be a township design fundi and embark on integrated designs encompassing everything from roads to stormwater design" John de Smidt JDS Planning & Design, East London LASTING MONUMENTS "I have come to respect AllyCAD's capabilities and prefer the program above any other CAD package" Tim Styles Impendulo Design Architects Transkei

SHEETFILE EDITOR
Your production drawings are now dynamically updated as you change your design. Using the new powerful sheetfile concept, unique to Civil Designer, you can generate production drawings with detailed title blocks, north signs, grids, scale bars and much more so that your plotting requires minimal, if any, CAD editing. The sheetfiles can be created or edited using normal CAD functions in a vastly improved Editor.

VISUAL EDITORS
Civil Designer CAD module has a highly customisable Graphical User Interface (GUI). You can easily edit menus, toolbars, palettes and linestyles through visual editors. You don't have to edit text files to customize these anymore. Company standards are then easily enforced by placing standardized palettes, pen mappings, line styles, menus on a network drive for all workstations to use seamlessly. Visual indicators, skins, prompt colours, geometry colours and messages can also be customized from within the CAD.

CONTROL CENTRE ALLOWS EASY ACCESS TO SYMBOLS, HATCHING, TEXT, DIMENSION AND LINE STYLES
The Control Centre gives you quick and easy access to view and interact with styles, layers and objects in a drawing through a central interface.

PROPERTY BAR (for entities)
All entities can now be easily edited in the same place through the Properties Bar. One can quickly select a set of entities and then edit properties common to them.

LAYOUTS
Civil Designer CAD module now has layouts that can contain viewports into the drawing. If your drawing changes, the changes are immediately reflected in the layout vieworts.

OUTPUT BAR
The Output Bar displays information such as the measurements and properties of entities when you measure or query an entity or polygon area. The Output bar will be displayed automatically when results of an operation need to be presented to the user. Output can be printed or written to file.

TABLE & TOLERANCE ENTITY FUNCTION
The Table & Tolerance Entity function makes it a lot faster to draw tables and tolerances. Table styles can now simplify table formatting.

ADVANCED SELECTION FILTER
In addition to the legacy selection filter dialog, which has been greatly streamlined, a new very powerful Advanced Selection Filter has been added.

DRAWINGS FROM TEMPLATES
You can create template drawings with your preferred settings, styles and titleblocks and then use them as a starting point when you start a new drawing.

STYLE IMPORTER
The Style Importer allows you to import text styles, dimension styles line styles etc from external drawings. This is much quicker than trying to recreate the styles by hand.

TEXT STYLES
Powerful use of text styles for drawing and customising text.

FLYOUT TOOLBARS
The toolbars in can display multiple toolbar buttons without sacrificing screen space by employing sub-toolbars (called flyouts). These are displayed only when activated and are otherwise not visible.

NEW CAD ENTITIES ADDED
The following are just some of the new CAD entities that have been added:

3D Face Arc-Aligned Text Helix Lights 3D Polyline Multiline OLEFrame Polygon Mesh

Polyface Mesh Ray RText Spline Table Tolerance Wipeout

EXPLODE AND REPEATEDLY EXPLODE FUNCTION
This explode function breaks a compound entity (object) into its component entities (what it is made up of), while the repeatedly explode function will explode a compound entity to its base entities so that they can be edited. Explode text functions can be used to explode text to polylines.

COMPREHENSIVE PURGE FUNCTION
This function removes unused objects from the drawing. You can select what entities you wish to remove from the dialogue box.

RIGHT CLICK CONTEXT SENSITIVE MENU
All our functions have a right click menu containing options specific to the current function. This will increase your drawing speed, because functions you are likely to use are easily accessible when you right click.

BLOCK BROWSER (Symbols)
Allows you to visually browse symbol files and drawings for blocks. Please note that we now refer to Blocks instead of Symbols.

OLE FRAME OBJECT FUNCTION
The new OLE Frame function allows you to embed other documents into your drawing which can always be useful in keeping track of everything you need that relates to the design.

DIMENSIONING
Completely reworked dimensioning which is much easier to use and flexible than before. Dynamic dimension preview shows you exactly what the dimension will be before it becomes part of the drawing. You can also have different dimension styles per drawing.

PLOTTING
New plotting function uses the powerful sheet file system, but generates layouts with viewports. Your production drawings will therefore automatically update as you change your design

VISUAL SNAPS
Visual snaps allow you to see where a snap will occur before you click. While moving the cursor, the program will dynamically indicate where the nearest snap point is. While in Graball snap mode, it will also indicate what type of snap point is the nearest snap point.

GRAPHICAL EDITING
Easy graphical editing of all selected entities by either selection handles or nodes. This includes hatches, elliptical arcs and splines.

USER INTERFACE & EASE OF USE
The user-interface has been made much more intuitive, consistent and user-friendly in the latest version.

AUTO TRACKING
Much improved auto tracking for defining hatches, which includes island detection.

GEOMETRY LINES FUNCTIONALITY & CIRCLES
We have retained the Geometry lines (a superset of construction lines) and circles but they now give better visual feedback when you are busy drawing and are more intuitive and easier to use

FAST REDRAWS
We have optimized our redraw routine to make redraws really fast which further improves your productivity.

MOUSE WHEEL ZOOMING & PANNING
This helps you to quickly get to the part of the design that you need to work on with the mouse wheel.

STRUCTURAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Allows speedy drawing of building grids and structural steel sections. Read more..

• Provides building grids with centre lines and column bases
• Fully configurable grid dimensions and labels with bubbles
• Ensures quick adding of column bases to grids
• Allows rapid drawing of hot rolled steel sections
• Includes I and H sections, Channels, Angles and plate girders
• Allows rapid drawing of cold rolled steel sections
• Includes angles, channels, lipped zeds and top hats

MECHANICAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Provides fast and effective drawing of common mechanical components. Read more..

• Fully customizable mechanical toolkit default settings
• Extensive list of fasteners with automatic linear or polar repeat
• Through or blind drill/tap holes in plan, elevation or section
• Easy drawing of shafts, links, flanges and spur gears
• Annotate welds, tolerances and surface finishes
• Generate tables of coordinate, part and general information
• Draw rectangular to round ducting with development view

SURVEY TOOLKIT FEATURES
Allows easy generation of Survey General Diagrams and General Plans. Read more..

• Generate 'ready to lodge' SG diagrams, General Plans and Sectional Plans
• Automatically creates tabled and annotated SG diagrams
• Automatically dimensions General Plans
• Create outside figure and reference mark tables
• Create Sectional Title block and floor plans and Schedules
• User specified splay wizard

 

THE ILLUSTRIOUS 'MEERKAT' "We made good use of Civil Designer when checking anomalies and used the program extensively to generate sheet files, saving hours" Elmine Grobbelaar Aurecon Consulting Engineers, Bloemfontein CREATIVE CONTROL IN SURVEY "I like the fact that you can import aerial photography into AllyCAD as this helps with Sheet File creation" Imraan Mohammed MHP Geomatics, KZN

Read more testimonials and showcases here ⇒