Corel Adds CAD to its Technical Portfolio

By DE Editors

Expanding its graphics and technical illustration portfolio, Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON) has announced the availability CorelCAD. The company says CorelCAD delivers native DWG support, customizable work environments, and the ability to seamlessly navigate between 2D and 3D design environments. Corel reports that it partnered with Graebert GmbH, a developer of CAD software, to develop and market CorelCAD.

Screen images courtesy of Corel Corp.

CorelCAD is coded for the Mac and Windows platforms and is described by the company as a low-cost CAD solution. The company says that CorelCAD offers small- and medium-sized businesses as well as larger enterprises “an affordable option for site-wide deployments ]and] for day-to-day design projects that require a high level of precision and detail.”

“The high cost of many CAD solutions makes it a prohibitive expense for small- to medium-sized businesses,” said Klaus Vossen, Product Manager for Technical Graphics at Corel in a press statement. “CorelCAD represents a great alternative, particularly for technical designers seeking power and precision at an affordable price.”

CorelCAD is said to offer users an intuitive environment with familiar command bars, aliases, menus, and toolbars. The company reports that CorelCAD uses DWG as its native file format and offers DXF and DWF support up to AutoCAD 2010 file format. Drawings can be saved back to R12 DWG or DXF format, and DWG and DXF files reportedly are recoverable in all format versions. CorelCAD also supports the ACIS model (.sat) file format as well as PDF and SVG. Additionally, CorelCAD Windows files are exportable to CorelDRAW X5 and Corel DESIGNER X5 formats for re-purposing in presentations and marketing-related deliverables.

Screen images courtesy of Corel Corp.

For 2D drafting, CorelCAD offers smart tools, such as entity snap, entity snap guides, and polar guides. With its entity grips, users can reposition, align, copy, or resize entities quickly. A Properties palette enables users to manipulate entity attributes, such as layer, color, and line style. Users can create custom coordinate systems to align the construction plane to drawing objects.

Notable 3D solid modeling tools cited by the company include the ability to use Boolean operations to unite, intersect, and subtract bodies; extrude or revolve 2D entities; sweep 2D entities along a path, or loft between 2D entities to create solid objects; slice and intersect solids; and edit edges, faces, and bodies of 3D solids.

3D models can be viewed from multiple viewpoints or rolled into 3D space interactively with CorelCAD. Tiled viewports let users split a drawing into multiple view tiles. 3D models can then be displayed in different views, such as front, right, top, and isometric. Shaded and rendered views are available.

Screen images courtesy of Corel Corp.

CorelCAD offers customized workspaces and automation of common tasks, reportedly tunable without any programming knowledge. Custom workspace configurations can be saved in user profiles to be deployed to specific projects as needed. CorelCAD supports LISP and Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA), enabling users to create functions, routines, and plug-ins in the CorelCAD automation interface.

Annotation and collaboration tool in the Windows version of CorelCAD are available through the software’s VoiceNotes tool, which lets you add recorded messages, reminders, or instructions directly in your drawing. Users can also mark up drawing items with freehand sketches and mask portions of a drawing to exempt them from annotations.

Screen images courtesy of Corel Corp.

CorelCAD is available now in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Suggested pricing is $699 (US and CDN). Certain levels of registered users of CorelDRAW Premium Suite, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4, and Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4 or higher are eligible for cross-grade pricing of $499 (US and CDN). Commercial and academic volume licenses are also available.

Go to Corel Corp. for full details on CorelCAD.

Watch a YouTube video on CorelCAD.

Review the CorelCAD system requirements.

Sign up to download a 30-day trial version of CorelCAD.

See why DE’s Editors selected CorelCAD as their Pick of the Week.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.