RETARDI.c.a.d.

Today was a day of immense frustration due largely in part to the TOTALLY RETARDED programme ironically titled INTELLIcad. Well done. In order to save money, kiamsiap boss has decided to buy a lower-grade and supposedly similar cadding programme for the whole office. I think the price for an original Intellicad is about 300 bucks compared to a a 5000 for the autocad equivalent. After using the programme for 5 mins, I realised the reason (or reasonS) for the enormous disparity in pricing. Let me count the ways I hate thee:

1. Intellicad does not allow you to move n object based on a numerical distance. You have to click on a base point first and then click on a point that indicates the new position. Which means that even if you knew the exact distance of required displacement, you would have to first draw a line through that point of displacement (if there isn't already an existing one marking the position already) before moving the object to a point on that line. Alternatively, you could just agah-agah, which totally defeats the purpose of a computer drafting programme doesn't it?

2. Same thing goes for the stretch command, which becomes rendered rather useless since I have to offset the exact amount of stretch before I do it, I might as well complete the job with extend and trim. If stretch is done without a proper reference point, the object stretched goes into weird far-out shapes. (Now THAT is real originality for you!)

3. Intellicad requires you to click on a real point in order to indicate the direction for offsetting a line. Which means that if you wanted to offset a line to the right by 100mm, and there wasn't any other object to the right of that line, you would first have to draw an additional line on the right so that you would have a 'real point' to click onto when the offset command calls for it. Whatever happened to the computer's sense of directionality?!!?

4. Intellicad's undo button DOES NOT WORK. Period. This one is a real killer because anyone who has drafted before knows how immensely important the undo command is in autocad. With the undo command, there is nothing to fear. You draw, and if it looks wrong, it can be undone without any damage to the rest of the dwg. Not so with Intellicad though. Its undo command has its whims and fancies, jumping to another part of the drawing when pressed such that you CANNOT see what the hell you are undoing, skips many steps (ie the entire morning's work can be undone by just using the undo command ONCE.), and somehow seems to be able to undo everything except THE very one you want undone. I have since given up on undoing stuff. Now, I find it is less painful to delete and REDO.

5. Intellicad's response is absolutely retarded. Unlike autocad's smooth panning command (unless working with huge file sizes), Intellicad pans in jerks and stops, often jumping in the direction OPPOSITE of the one in which you are panning towards. Makes me feel like I have to pull the entire computer monitor along in order to see that part of the drawing that I want to see. Come on dammit! Commands take awhile to register, quick-saving files takes even longer (I can nod off while saving), programme hangs on simple delete commands, and every single command comes with an irritating pop-up box on the right hand side, that lists relevant commands that I have never seen before in autocad.

6. Intellicad 'misplaces' objects rather too frequently. When block entities are exploded, more often than not, certain portions of the block goes missing into the black hole that is the model space. Hatches also disappear without warning, and I really have no idea why it becomes like that.

7. Intellicad does not allow you to copy/paste objects based on a reference point. Which translates to flying objects all over the place whenever the paste command is used (especially when you're dealing with more than one drawing file at the same time that need to be referenced together.) Objects also rotate to weird angles even though the file which the object was copied from has exactly the same ucs as the file that the object is being pasted into. Zoom extents to find the flying objects take a long time, and this can get very very boring for the cadder as progress becomes slow and torturous.


I hate thee retardicad. I want to quit.