 devCAD
Smart technology examples 
 Smart
Polar Snap
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Smart Polar Snap is an innovative snapping technology
developed by the devCad Team.
You are probably aware of the usual Ortho and Polar Snaps offered by most
standard CAD applications.
A CAD user normally draws using these snaps, plus object snaps, temporary track
points, construction lines and other features; all this can become rather
boring and slow.....
Smart Polar Snap was developed to offer an easy and automatic support for the
most used drawing procedures.
It reacts to 450 different drawing contexts in the most useful way, displaying
one or more dynamic snaps.
When the cursor is captured by a Smart Polar Snap line, the tooltip shows the
Snap type and the referring polar center is highlighted (default color is cyan)
Smart Polar Snap is activated either when you draw a new object or when you
edit an existing one.
It reacts also to other objects, for example displaying a Tangent and a
Perpendicular Snap when clicking on an existing object
It can be even used when Radial Snap and one or more Object Snaps are enabled.
Use the bottom toolbar to toggle Smart Polar Snap.
After using Smart Polar Snap, you will be happy to work with it!
Some examples:
 Draw
a segment tangent (or perpendicular) to an object at a specified point
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This is a rather common (and boring) case.
If the curve is a circle or an arc you must enable Center Object Snap, draw a
construction line (or ray) from the center to the specified point, draw a
construction line (or ray) perpendicular the last created line, enable Near
Object Snap, draw the segment and delete the construction lines.
A very long way to go...
And what if the curve is a spline for example?
Mumble mumble.....
The approach with Smart Polar Snap is really simple:
Enable Smart Polar Snap and Near Object Snap, pick the first selected point and
you will see the tangent and perpendicular Snaps!!!
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Rectification
of a polygon
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This is a common operation performed after digitizing, as an
example, a scanned raster drawing.
With Smart Polar Snap enabled you need only to use a few clicks of the mouse.
Click on a vertex and move the cursor on the right Snap lines.
When you see the near vertices highlighted (cyan) you can click again to shift
the vertex.
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Move
a door along a wall
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A very easy and fast task using Smart Polars Snap and the
Stretch command!
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Shear
- How to modify the sweep-back of a wing
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The Shear function is another great feature of
devCad.
You can shear every object along horizontal, vertical or a free axis.
This can be very useful for example if you want modify the sweep-back of a wing
with just a few click of the mouse.
See an example in the included movie.
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NUScale
- How to modify the aspect-ratio of a wing
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The NUScale function stays for Non-Uniform scaling.
You can modify every object using X and Y different scale factors.
This can be very useful for example if you want modify the aspect-ratio, simply
select the objects to modify, the basepoint, then input the X and Y scale
factors.
See an example in the included movie.
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Double
polyline
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Using the DLine function you can draw double
polyline, with automatically rounded corners.
You can for example using it to draw a simple landing gear.
See an example in the included movie.
Please note also a useful trick: you can use Smart Polars Snap to select the
direction of the segment, and insert the segment length in the command line.
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Drawing
over a raster file
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Sometime you may want to draw over a raster file (for
example a scanned plan or drawing), to vectorize it (or some part).
DevCad offer you the technology to do that.
The involved steps are:
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Insert the raster file as an image background in a CAD drawing
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Calibrate it, inserting the real length of a specified segment
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Set a color to the lines of the drawing (optional). This can help you to
distinguish between raster lines and CAD objects.
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Enable Raster snap, to snap the cursor to the lines of the raster image
(optional)
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Draw lines, polylines, arcs, circle and so over the raster image
See an example in the included movie.
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RTF
- Rich Text Format management
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Formatted texts, tables and inserted images are often a big
problem in CAD applications.
DevCad offer you a very simple approach.
You can create a RTF (Rich Text Format) file using for example Office
applications like Word or Excel, then insert it in devCad drawings.
Tables, images, texts styles and so on are managed by RTF and automatically
included in your drawing.
You can also use the built in editor to create and edit RTF files.
See an example in the included movie.
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Insert
objects from Parts Library
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DevCad includes a hierarchical and extensible Parts Library.
You can insert prebuilt parts from the included library, or create your own
libraries.
See an example in the included movie.
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Curved
text
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With devCad you can draw a Curved Text, using an
existing object as a path.
Almost all the object types can be used as a path, including:
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Lines
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Polylines
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Arcs
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Circles
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Ellipses
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Elliptical arcs
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Smart shapes
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Regions
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Text boxes
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Curved text boxes
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Rich Text Format boxes
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Images boxes
See an example of a text over a Polyline in the included movie.
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Region
split/divide
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You can 2 split/divide a region in 2 or more parts,
including also dovetail cutting lines, in a very simple way. See an example in
the included movie.
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Add
lightening holes to a region
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You can add complex lightening holes to a region in a very
simple way. See an example in the included movie.
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Convert
a Polyline to a Pline, to smooth it
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You can convert a Polyline to a Spline, to smooth it. See an
example in the included movie.
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Create
Math polylines
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You can create Math polylines, using cartesian or polar
coordinates, and also parametric formula. See an example in the included movie.
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Cam
project: concave corner overcut
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When cutting parts with slots, a little area of material can
stay unmilled inside concave corners. This is caused by the diameter of the
milling tool. With devCad you can apply the 'concave corner overcut property'
to profiling and area cleaning, to have some more material milled there.
See an example in the included movie.
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Cam
project: Cutting wizard
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By the cutting wizard you can select contours or region and
create in a very simple way 1 or more Cam Projects. The Nesting of the parts is
provided by the application.
See an example in the included movie.
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Autotrace:
Vectorializing a background raster image
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By using the 'Draw - Autotrace a background image' command
you can vectorialize a raster image in a very fast and simple way.
See an example in the included movie.
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How
to clean a dirty geometry
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By using the 'Wizards - Try automatic Parts generation'
command you can clean a dirty geometry creating valid Parts/Regions form
intersecating and/or bad drawn geometries.
See an example in the included movie.
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Coming soon.....
We are preparing more videos showing
examples of our Smart technologies
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