The AllyCAD Advantage

INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH AND USER-FRIENDLY
AllyCAD is chosen by AEC (architectural, engineering and construction) professionals for its superior power and reliability. Where other CAD packages might let you down, for example in their ability to handle large datasets, AllyCAD remains robust. We have clients that have loaded over 200 bitmaps totaling 35Gigabytes in just one project! When it comes to ease-of-use, AllyCAD's intuitive interface has earned it the reputation as one of the most user-friendly packages on the market. The package places all the draughting functionality that you need at your fingertips, allowing you to design the way you want to.

EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF 3D
AllyCAD 2010 has been rewritten to allow for both 2D and 3D draughting and is even faster and more robust than AllyCAD 3.6. If you want to take your product design to the next level and are thinking of switching to 3D, you will be happy to know that AllyCAD offers perspective viewports, 3D views and rendering.

COMPATIBLE WITH LATEST DWG/DXF AND OTHER FORMATS
Knowledge Base is a founder member of the Open Design Alliance and, as such, our inside knowledge of the DWG drawing structure ensures high compatibility when loading and saving DWG and DXF drawing formats, including Paper Spaces. In addition we also support loading of Caddie CEX, Arcview SHP, Microstation DGN and Ultimate Cad UCX files. This gives you unprecedented flexibility to move between drawings without having to worry about incompatibilities and data exchange problems. AllyCAD 2010 also handles very large image files (typically JPG, TIFF and BMP files) with ease and also supports most geo-referenced bitmaps as well as ER Mapper ECW and Lizardtech SID images.

GEOMETRY LINES
While most CAD systems put a vast arsenal of snaps and cursor moves at your disposal, they usually force you to draw the way the programmers want to draw, and not the way you would draw naturally. That is why we include geometry lines in AllyCAD. Geometry lines are a superset of construction lines. They allow you to define the layout, position lines and arcs tangential to each other, and to define the basic layout of the drawing elemtents. Thereafter you can simply fill in with solid lines to create the objects.

Whats New In 2010

FULL DWG COMPATIBILITY
By full DWG compatibility, we mean simply opening an existing DWG drawing or easily converting your AllyCAD drawing into the DWG format with no loss of data and with just a few clicks. No "work arounds" are required because the data structures are identical in terms of the design. This includes XRefs, Layouts with viewports and styles.

3D FUNCTIONALITY
AllyCAD 2010 has been rewritten to allow for both 2D and 3D draughting and is even faster and stronger than AllyCAD 3.6. We have added 3D rendering with smooth shading, perspective view and hidden line removal. You can define your own lighting and view your design in a split modelspace or work on any view (top/side/iso) at the same time. If you want to take your product design to the next level and are thinking of switching to 3D, you will be happy to know that AllyCAD 2010 offers:

• Layouts and viewports
• 3D entities
• Multiple Views
• 3D rendering
• Blocks and XRefs

ADVANCED INTUITIVE FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS ADDED
AllyCAD's user-interface has been made much more intuitive, consistent and user-friendly and a significant amount of new advanced functionality has been added including:

The Control Centre;
View and interact with styles, layer and objects in a drawing through a central interface.




Control Panel, Properties Bar & Output Bar



Property Bar (for entities), OLE Frame object function, Table and Tolerance Entity function added;
All entities can now be easily edited in the same place through the Properties Bar. One can quickly select a set of entities and then edit properties common to the selected entities in the Properties bar. The new OLE Frame function additionally allows you to embed other documents into your drawing which can always be useful in keeping track of everything you need that relates to the design. The Table and Tolerance entities function makes it a lot faster than drawing tables and tolerances by hand.

The AllyCAD Toolkits

The AllyCAD specialised toolkits have been designed to speed up essential but time-consuming tasks relevant to the various CAD disciplines.

GENERAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
The General Toolkit contains innovative functionality specifically designed to speed up your design time. Read more..

• Print multiple drawings and esaily edit your batch print list
• Convert multiple files between DRG, DWG, DXF and CEX formats
• Read Excel spreadsheets and insert the data directly into your drawing
• Insert the date and the visible layer information on the plot
• Quickly divide lines and angles into a specified number of segments
• Instantly calculate total line length (eg cables /pipes on a layer)
• Hide or set a layer by clicking on any entity in the layer
• Easily convert all line types and pens to normal line and pen numbers
• Write any text onto any arc with a specified text height and pen
• Quickly draw a revision cloud to focus attention on design areas
• Easily draw centrelines, chamfered rectangles and filleted rectangles

ARCHITECTURAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Ships with SABS 0400-1990 building standards for speedy design of building plans. Read more..

• Set, edit, load and save building standard files
• Easy draughting of external and internal walls for buildings
• Roof line insertion for drawing roof elevation and cross sections
• Fully customizable symbol library in easy referenced structure
• Easy editing, saving and reloading of internal/external wall types
• Draw horizontal & vertical cross sections from existing plan view
• Easy adding of plan and elevations of staircase to drawings

The AllyCAD Versions

The AllyCAD versions are all fully functional but differ in terms of drawing size limitation and the level of support available. Please refer to the table below:

	Home	Micro	SME	Pro
Full Functionality
Toolkits Included
Drawing size:	300 KB	600 KB	1800 KB	Unlimited
Security:	None	Crypkey	Dongle	Dongle
Email support:
Telephonic support
Support Forum
Free updates

If you are looking for an introduction to AllyCAD, you can download the free AllyCAD Home version. Note that this version is limited to a 300Kb drawing size and support is only available via the Support forum. Download AllyCAD Home Edition →

HANDLES MULTIPLE BACKDROP DISPLAYS OF HUGE SIZES
AllyCAD is known for its lightening speed of handling huge images. You can add multiple large geo-referenced images such as orthophotos or cadastral backdrops to view the spatial relationship of your design to other manmade or natural features. Easily rotate, clip, georeference your images with brightness/contrast control. Redraws are handled in no time and the software supports: JPEG (jpg), JPEG2000 (jp2), Windows Bitmap (bmp), LizardTech MrSID (sid), ERMapper ECW (ecw), Portable Network Graphics (png), Graphic Interchange Format (gif), Tagged Image File Format (tiff), TrueVision Targa (tga) and Personal Computer Exchange (pcx), which should cover just about any image you may have.

FEATURE RICH AND EMBEDDED SPECIALISED TOOLKITS
AllyCAD comes complete with a control centre that allows easy access to symbols, hatching, text, dimensions and line styles. We additionally have developed specialised functionality in toolkits that allows you to complete many time consuming tasks in a matter of seconds. The toolkit consists of General, Architectural, Survey, Survey Diagram, Mechanical and Structural functions which are all included to give you the edge over your competitors.

ON-GOING DEVELOPMENT AND UNBEATABLE SUPPORT
When you become a member of the international community of AllyCAD users you are buying into much more than just a powerful CAD system. You will be signing on to the broad range of support services including a hotline to our local support centre, remote desktop support, visits to your offices, user group meetings, workshops, and regular product upgrades and updates. This is complimented by frequent Tech Tip tutorials and specialised training to meet your requirements.

The Knowledge Base development team is continually improving AllyCAD in order to meet our users requirements and keep up with the latest industry developments. This close relationship we have with our users is highly prized by our existing clients and is the reason why AllyCAD is the preferred choice of professionals, consultants, local authorities, technikons and universities. Our Support Contract ensures that you receive the latest updates as soon as they are released and allows you priority access to our Customer Support Centre.

The Output Bar;
The Output Bar displays information such as the measurements and properties of entities when you measure or query an entity or polygon area. The Output bar may appear automatically when results of an operation need to be presented to the user.

The Visual Editors;
AllyCAD 2010 brings forth superb customizability of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). You can easily edit menus, toolbars, palettes, linestyles, through visual editors. You don't have to edit text files to customize these anymore. Company standards can then easily be enforced by placing standardized pallets, pen mappings, line styles, menus etc on a network drive for all workstations to use seamlessly. Visual indicators, skins, prompt colours, geometry colours and messages can also be customized.

Visual snaps;
While moving the cursor, the program will dynamically indicate where the nearest snap point is. While in Graball snap mode, it will also indicate what type of snap point is the nearest snap point.

Creating new drawings from Templates;
You can create template drawings with your preferred settings, styles and titleblocks and then use them as a starting point when you start a new drawing.

Block Browser (Symbols);
To visually browse symbol files and drawings for blocks. Please note that we now refer to Blocks instead of Symbols.

Style Importer;
Allows you to import styles from external drawings. This is much quicker than trying to recreate the styles by hand.

Geometry Lines and Circles;
We have retained the Geometry lines and circles that was in AllyCAD 3.6 but they now give better visual feedback when you are busy drawing them and are more intuitive and easier to use.

Improved Dimension drawing routines;
Much more user friendly, intuitive and a lot more powerful!

Mouse wheel zooming and panning;
This helps you to quickly get to the part of the design that you need to work on.

Flyout Toolbars Introduced;
The toolbars in AllyCAD 2010 can display multiple toolbar buttons without sacrificing screen space by employing sub-toolbars (called flyouts). These are displayed only when activated and are otherwise not visible.



Improved Image Handling Ability and Speed;
Easily rotate, clip, georeference your images with brightness/contrast control. AllyCAD is known for its lightening speed of handling huge images. We currently support JPEG (jpg), JPEG2000 (jp2), Windows Bitmap (bmp), LizardTech MrSID (sid), ERMapper ECW (ecw), Portable Network Graphics (png), Graphic Interchange Format (gif), Tagged Image Format (tif), TrueVision Targa (tga) and Personal Computer Exchange (pcx), which should cover just about any image you may have.
 

STRUCTURAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Allows speedy drawing of building grids and structural steel sections. Read more..

• Provides building grids with centre lines and column bases
• Fully configurable grid dimensions and labels with bubbles
• Ensures quick adding of column bases to grids
• Allows rapid drawing of hot rolled steel sections
• Includes I and H sections, Channels, Angles and plate girders
• Allows rapid drawing of cold rolled steel sections
• Includes angles, channels, lipped zeds and top hats

MECHANICAL TOOLKIT FEATURES
Provides fast and effective drawing of common mechanical components. Read more..

• Fully customizable mechanical toolkit default settings
• Extensive list of fasteners with automatic linear or polar repeat
• Through or blind drill/tap holes in plan, elevation or section
• Easy drawing of shafts, links, flanges and spur gears
• Annotate welds, tolerances and surface finishes
• Generate tables of coordinate, part and general information
• Draw rectangular to round ducting with development view

SURVEY TOOLKIT FEATURES
Allows easy generation of Survey General Diagrams and General Plans. Read more..

• Generate 'ready to lodge' SG diagrams, General Plans and Sectional Plans
• Automatically creates tabled and annotated SG diagrams
• Automatically dimensions General Plans
• Create outside figure and reference mark tables
• Create Sectional Title block and floor plans and Schedules
• User specified splay wizard

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The minimum system requirements for the installation and use of AllyCAD are indicated below:

Core 2 Duo processor (3GHz) 2048MB RAM SXGA (1280 x 1024 display) 240MB free hard-disk space Windows XP/Vista/or later AllyCAD 2010 will install as a 64 bit version if your operating system is 64 bit. Older versions will also run on a 64 bit system, but as a 32 bit program. The program is not multi-treaded, and does not require GPU acceleration. A dedicated graphics card will improve performance but is not required.