Isn't it about time Illustrator added cad tools?

Mark, we are probably of like mind regarding most of the specific features you have in mind. So don't take the following rant as any kind of personal rebuff. It's just an attempt to "raise the conceptual bar" among the user community at large.

The only "CAD" features the program needs are not really specifically "CAD" features, but merely ho-hum, general-purpose features that should be provided in any decent 2D drawing software:

User-defined drawing scales.

Proper corner fillet/chamfer commands.

Dimension tools.

Callout tools.

Connector Lines.

Straightforward 2D oblique "exrusion" command/tool.

Proper Arch/Ellipse tool.

Geometric primitives with live shape parameters.

Reliable snaps.

Better data-integration features.

(For those, Adobe needs look no farther than any of Illustrator's direct competitors.)

Of course, fundamental to that and everything else, it also needs a complete overhaul in these areas:

Better selection interface.

Better and more powerful point/handle/segment behavior.

Better text handling.

(For those, Adobe needs look no farther than its own acquired property, FreeHand.)

Illustrator certainly needs all those things. But it's all been done by Illustrator's competitors for decades. It's all one big yawn.

For the real crux of what Illustrator needs in regards to "CAD" features, FORGET CAD. Traditional "CAD" implies just stupid flat-plane orthographic multiview drawing. Too many people (evidently even the developers) think 2D drawing is necessarily confined to drawing surfaces parallel to the picture plane. Any serious technical/commercial illustrator who ever worked on a decent mechanical drawing board prior to the desktop revolution of the mid 80s knows better. Yes, you should be able to do a simple floor plan in Illustrator. That is hardly rocket science these days. And in fact it can be done in most any direct competitor to Illustrator. But that mediocre goal falls horribly short of what should be the target of any ostensibly "professional" program for 2D drawing in the 21st century.

Fercryinoutloud, this is supposed to be an illustration program, not a meer flat-on-the-page, paper-doily design program. It's supposed to be for drawing things, not just for making flat wallpaper patterns and paper cutouts (and floorplans). In other words, it needs to encourage and empower an actual illustrator to actually think like an illustrator. That means the overwhelming thrust of the interface should be designed from the ground up to facilitate construction of drawings directly upon perspective angles, axes, and rays instead of having to transfer, project, skew, distort, rotate and otherwise conjole everything from the tyrannical vertical and horizontal page edges.

I don't care if you use the latest, most-ballyooed newer features like mesh grads or (egads!) on-object grad handles, or even the "amazing" Blob Tool (gag me), or even if the result of your work is absolutely photo-realistic; this fact remains: Every single realistic, like-the-eye-sees-it thing you draw is a continuous process of trying to unshackle your drawing from the lame X,Y orientation of every feature, every command. Ellipses defined only in terms of height and width. Grids that are only rectangular (and in Illustrator, only square). Snap increments that are only horizontal or vertical. Rotations that are only orthographic.

Rather than having to rely upon a very few universally disappointing and piecemeal distortion features and an endless stream of elaborate, "clever" workarounds to escape the lame height/width orientation of every single feature, perspective drawing should be the primary interface of anything called an "illustration" program. And do not overlook: Perspective drawing INCLUDES parallel perspective, not just converging perspective.

This whole category of 2D Bezier drawing programs is still stuck entirely in its pubescent 80s origins. Of the lot, through neglect of very basic improvements Illustrator has become worst-of-class in may basic ways. Computer technology and interface advancement has completely outpaced development of these programs. The computing power is there. The geometry is public domain. There is no technological reason mainstream 2D drawing can't be completely re-invigorated with the first-ever 2D drawing program to actually expedite realistic 2D illustration.

But such an attempt should not be hamstrung from the beginning by Illustrator's completely carved-in-stone, holy-ground, archaic, backward, inefficient, cluttered, confused, inefficient grab-bag legacy interface scheme, and outdated poor performance.  Illustrator can't even get alignment of points, cutting of paths, or joining of paths right, after two-and-a-half decades of development. Something entirely new is needed, and I see no indication that Adobe is even interested.

Blame the user base. If you think "CAD" is sophisticated, and even if you aspire to nothing more than brain-dead-simple single-plane orthograpic "CAD" features, you are doing your own cause a disservice by even referring to "CAD." You are virtually begging many vocal longtime AI users to trot out their worn-out, just-don't-get-it mantra: 'But it's not supposed to be a technical drawing program.' Such blinders-wearing minions and mediocrity-addicted lap-dog devotees actually consider being able to label a measurement or set an arc accurately too "technical."

And please, leave 3D out of it. The world is full of 3D drawing programs. If you think 3D modeling is the answer to everything, then you don't really get the difference. 2D drawing is no more rendered obsolete by 3D modeling than pool is rendered obsolete by tennis. It's just that we have yet to see a serious mainstream 2D drawing program that aspires to be much more than a blunt crayon and T-square. And that's a pity.

JET

User-defined drawing scales.

Proper corner fillet/chamfer commands.

Dimension tools.

Callout tools.

Connector Lines.

Straightforward 2D oblique "exrusion" command/tool.

Proper Arch/Ellipse tool.

Geometric primitives with live shape parameters.

Reliable snaps.

Better data-integration features.

 

+1

Oh man... those features would be worth the entire price of the Creative Suite to me!

Markocheese wrote:

 

Flash is turning into a serious development platform for mobile media;

Oh Jebus, I sure hope not.

Oh man... those features would be worth the entire price of the Creative Suite to me!

Corel Draw, Corel Designer, or Deneba Canvas can be had for a small fraction of that.

JET

They could definitely be added in one program cycle.

They haven't been added in fourteen versions.

JET

Markocheese wrote:

 

Y'know. What with iPhone export and such. I'm not saying it'll succeed, but that's where Adobe's trying to take it.

iPhone export? Flash? You got a time machine?

To me what Illustrator and Indesign and Photoshop need are 3D CAD import capabilities that are in acrobat 9 extended. For those of us that do instruction manuals and so on we need to handle native CAD data sets and apply illustrative techniques to that like thick n thin lines, simple shading, explode lines, arrows etc.

The ironic thing is that Adobe HAVE the technology available now via Acrobat. Right now to achieve anything like an efficient workflow I have to load the CAD data into deep exploration 6 CAD, apply the styles and export to .ai. Acrobat has better CAD import that DE but you cannot export to the .ai file format. If Adobe got their act together and allowed direct handling of 3D CAD formats in Illustrator and Indesign, and handled the conversion to thick n thin/shading styles etc, and allowed users to move parts, change views etc DE would be out of business, and a huge number of Adobe customers would be jumping for joy (not to mention having a genuine reason to spend the cash on upgrades!).

If you think this cannot be done, look no further that Layout that comes as part of the Google SketchUp Pro package. Layout is well  a page layout app that opens sketchup files directly, lets the user get a view they need, apply a style etc. It is very slick. If Google can do this why now adobe?

the question I have to ask is do we really need yet another brush tool in photoshop, or another esoteric command in Indesign to apply styles or whatever? As we move into CS5 and 6 the suite should be starting to offer genuine workflow focussed tools for large parts of the Adobe user base.

I just got a new one ripped at the "Solid Works" forum simular to this issue. Why I did't look in Adobes's forum first...? I'm going to look into your solution. Thank you. And Oh this is what I get when exporting from Solid Works and opening from Illutrator.

I know it's been a few years since your post, but do you happen to remember what were exporting (views of a part/assembly) and what format you used (DXF/DWG, PDF, AI, ect)? I fuse Illustrator and SolidWorks on an almost daily basis in my workflow and never have problems with edges coming out like that.

is their a setting when creating a drawing. I tried setting the projected drawings from draft to fine and that sorta worked, but it creates so many path points just for a simple curve or even a circle. I know the bottom line for solid works and most cad software is to send it to a cnc machine.