Versatile 2D/3D Solutions for Every Project
DesignCAD™ 2D Express and DesignCAD™ 3D Max offer a comprehensive set of tools for both 2D drafting and 3D modeling, catering to a wide range of design needs. DesignCAD™ 2D Express features an intuitive interface with access to hundreds of drafting tools, enabling users to create precise, true-to-scale designs ideal for architectural plans, engineering layouts, and technical drawings. DesignCAD™ 3D Max expands these capabilities by providing advanced tools for high-quality 2D drafting, 3D modeling, rendering, and animation.
Versatile 2D/3D Solution
Whether designing furniture, floor plans, mechanical components, or artistic models, DesignCAD™ delivers the flexibility and precision needed to bring creative concepts to life.
Usability & User Interface
Smart Menus
DesignCAD™ offers smart menus that are initially presented with a shortened list of available menu commands to help reduce screen clutter. The menus can be expanded to show all items by clicking on the double arrows at the bottom of the menu. Great for learning, this option can be enabled or disabled depending on the user's preference.
Pre-defined Views
Easily switch between nine pre-set views—such as Front, Top, and Isometric—to adjust perspectives and improve visibility while working on designs.
Pre-defined views in DesignCAD™ 3D Max
Selection Tool
Selecting objects is determined by the direction of the selection window. Dragging from right to left selects entire objects even if only a part is within the selection area, while left-to-right selection requires full enclosure for selection.
Selection Tool
4K Support
Optimized for high-resolution displays, ensuring sharper visuals and improved readability on 4K screens for a more precise design experience.
Easy to Use 2D Drafting & Design
Intuitive yet sophisticated editing tools, advanced geometric construction capabilities, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and comprehensive layer management make 2D drafting effortless. Streamline your workflow:
- Usability Tools: Increase productivity with user-friendly features tailored for efficiency.
- Workspace Tools: Customize your workspace to suit your preferences and project needs.
- Macros: Automate repetitive tasks and save time with pre-defined macros.
- Drawing Tools: Access a wide range of tools for creating detailed and accurate drawings.
- Editing and Measuring: Precisely edit and measure elements within your design.
- Dimension Tools: Add professional dimensions to ensure clarity and precision.
- Groups, Blocks, Symbols, and More: Organize your designs efficiently using groups, reusable blocks, and an extensive symbol library.
Precision 3D Modeling
Unleash the power of 3D modeling with a complete set of primitives, including boxes, spheres, hemispheres, pyramids, cylinders, cones, and tori. Shape your 3D parts effortlessly with Boolean operations such as solid add, solid subtract, and slice. Enhance your designs by applying realistic materials to create presentation-ready models. Key features include:
- 3D View Settings: Customize your viewing experience with adjustable settings for optimal visualization.
- 3D Primitives: Easily build complex models from basic shapes.
- 3D (Solid) Editing Operations: Modify and refine your 3D objects with precision.
- 3D Visualization: Explore your designs in stunning detail with advanced visualization tools.
Precision 3D Modeling
Realistic Visualization and Lighting
Bring your creations to life with lifelike colors, materials, textures, and texture maps. Render your 3D models with transparency, fogging, shading, and dynamic lighting effects for added realism. Standout features include:
- Shadows: Enable shadows to ground your objects naturally within their environment.
- Procedural Textures: Incorporate realistic textures like marble, wood, cement, grain, Perlin noise, brick, cells, and extended wood patterns into your designs.
- Image Fills: Use custom images as fill patterns to add unique visual elements to your projects.
Real-Time OpenGL Rendering
Animation & Walkthroughs
Engage your audience and showcase your designs with animated presentations that feature dynamic walkthroughs of your 3D models. Bring your creations to life by simulating motion and interaction to effectively communicate your vision.
Animations & Walkthroughs
2D/3D Symbols
DesignCAD™ comes with over 10,000 2D/3D symbols to quickly drag and drop into your design.
3D Model Content for Easier Architectural Design
Access 600 editable 3D models to quickly drag and drop into your architectural designs. Each colorful, fully texture-mapped symbol can be modified to your exact specification.
- 129 Structural Models: Doors and hardware, windows and window treatments, fireplaces, wood moldings, and more.
- 234 Kitchen Items: Cabinets, appliances, faucets, sinks, counters, and more.
- 52 Bath Items: Tubs, faucets, sinks, vanities, and more.
- 134 Residential Items: Furniture, lighting fixtures, and home décor.
- 51 Office Items: Desks, file & storage cabinets, tables, shelving, and more.
Layers
DesignCAD™ utilizes layers that can be independently switched on and off for better visibility of the drawing. For example, if you just need to see the outline of a component, switch off other layers containing center lines, dimensions, etc. DesignCAD™ can also lock layers so they are visible but not editable, preventing accidental changes. Some features of objects, such as color or line style, can be controlled on a per-layer basis.
Group Editor in Info Box
View the internal structure of a group and any subgroups, and reorganize contents without exploding it. Group editing options include:
- Move highlighted group members or entire subgroups to a different layer.
- Remove individual objects or an entire subgroup from the topmost group (Extract).
- Move objects between subgroups of the topmost group (Move To).
- Collapse an entire group hierarchy to a single-level group (Unnested).
Drawing Compare
Select two DesignCAD™ drawings or BMP images, and the Drawing Compare feature will perform a visual comparison of the two. This tool is invaluable when working collaboratively on a project or when revisiting an older project to assess updates. Use it to compare a design with an As-Built drawing to identify where changes have been implemented.
Drawing Compare
Interoperable & Extendable
Added Flexibility When Sharing Your Work
- Print Section: Print only a specified region of the drawing for focused output.
- Print Scale Options: Choose from a standard set of print scale options or create custom scales tailored to your needs.
- Enhanced Print to PDF: Print multiple panels to PDF format, creating multipage PDF files for comprehensive documentation.
- User Notes: Add notes directly to any drawing for better communication and record-keeping.
- Save for Sharing: When saving a drawing, all externally referenced files (textures, symbols, images) are saved to a subfolder bearing the host drawing’s name, ensuring all dependencies are included.
- Paper Space Mode: Create a view frame and select a specific scale or define a custom view frame scale for precise layouts.
AutoCAD® DWG/DXF Compatible and More
Work seamlessly with the latest AutoCAD® files. Import/Export AutoCAD® files, enjoying excellent compatibility with AutoCAD® layouts, paper space, layers, line styles, views, and blocks in both DXF and DWG file formats. DesignCAD™ also offers limited support for architectural objects, recognizing and exploding them into DesignCAD™ equivalents.
AutoCAD® Support
Import/Export SketchUp Files
DesignCAD™ 3D Max supports importing and exporting drawings in the SKP format, enabling compatibility with SketchUp models. DesignCAD™ 2D Express allows users to export drawings in SKP format for use in SketchUp.
STL Support for 3D Printing
Import and export 3D models in STL format, one of the most widely used file formats for 3D printing.
PDF & Adobe Illustrator Import/Export
DesignCAD supports both importing and exporting 2D PDF and Adobe Illustrator files. Users can integrate these formats as underlays or extract their geometry for editing. The 2D PDF import filter allows direct import of geometric data from PDF files, while the Adobe Illustrator import filter provides the option to import files either as underlays or as editable geometry. Additionally, users can export their designs in both formats for compatibility with other software.
PDF Underlay
Import/Export OBJ Files
OBJ files serve as a common means of exchanging 3D models and are compatible with many CAD and solid- or surface-modeling programs. Note that DesignCAD™’s OBJ capabilities are limited to geometry only; materials and texture mapping are not supported.
Triangulate Surface Command
Reduce all faces of a Solid Surface object to triangles, simplifying conversions to other formats such as OBJ, DWG, DXF, STL, and SKP.
More Vector Formats Supported
In addition to the formats mentioned above, DesignCAD™ can import WMF, HPGL, and XYZ files and export or save to WMF, HPGL, RIB, VRML, WPG, and PDF formats.
GIF Image Support and More
DesignCAD™ supports various image formats, including BMP, TIF, JPG, TGA, PCX, PNG, and GIF, providing flexibility for incorporating raster graphics into your designs.
Extendable
Leverage the built-in BasicCAD scripting language or OLE Automation—or combine both—to add custom tools and enhancements to DesignCAD™, tailoring the software to meet your unique workflow requirements.
Note: The availability of features may vary across different model variants. For a detailed overview of feature distribution, please consult the Product Line Comparison Chart. For an overview of supported file formats, consult the File Format Comparison. This will help you identify which features are included in the variant you are interested in.
