Topic Title

Is anyone familiar w/ Intellicad? This seems to be a cost effective alternative to Autocad (by the makers of Arch-T) that saves and opens .DWG without any conversion conversion issues (to date).
Downloaded a demo that initially seems to work well. Also opens Autocad 2004.dwg files.

We use it in our office for limited use. Updating engineering drawings for construction and printing drawings from engineers to scale, mostly. It works great for limited use, because it is so cost effective. If you plan on using it extensively I would consider getting Autocad or Autocad LT.

Can you comment on what might be the downside of the program that would require limited use?
The cost of the program is only a part of the $$ equation. When considring a new program (i.e.DataCad) one must also factor in the cost of training (particularly those coming from years of AutoCad use). Intellicad seems to be a good cross-over option. Any thoughts?

There are enough differences in IntelliCAD to make it frusterating to use if you have used AutoCAD in the past. I have a copy of IntelliCAD 2000 and use it to try to open AutoCAD drawings. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

Printing has been a pain from IntelliCAD.

I have found certain viewers give me better understanding of the drawing.


I use eDrawings to view autocad drawings. works well for me.

Have you downloaded the latest version on line (6.1.19.0)? They may have worked out some of the earlier bugs. I've not had any issue w/ opening or saving back any versions of Autocad. It's also backward compatible all the way to Autocad 2.5. Take a look and let me know your thoughts...

The Icad version that seems to have the least bugs, squashes more of them than anyone else, and seems to bundle the most with it is BricsCad (www.bricscad.com). The most current version has alot of enhancements that bring it awfully close to Acad.

Also, for those in the Acad world they can import their PGP files (their two-letter shortcuts) directly in ... PLUS Icad will run Lisp routines, too!

The best IntelliCAD, without a doubt is the ProgeCAD, created in Italy.

First reason is that it uses the Wintopo to transform bitmaps into drawings vectorial, second, beyond one raytrace proper using until bitmap - what some versions still do not obtain, still creates in o2c - the our old friend and third, the impression is very easy with it.

The version in 2D the ProgeCAD LT is free.