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 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 2011 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 elements. Thereafter you can simply fill in with solid lines to create the objects.

What's New In 2011

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

Full DWG compatibility Mouse wheel zoom & pan Visual snaps show snap points Visual geometry tangents Auto-updating Layouts Split Views Multiple named viewports Blocks (enhanced symbols) Embedded drawings (Xrefs)

Text in mm on paper at all scales Coordinate Table styles Multiline Text Editor Dimension preview as you draw Perimeter tracking for hatch Enhanced Sheetfile Editor OLE objects (.DOC, .XLS, .CDR) 3D entities 3D rendering

NEW: 3D OBJECTS
AllyCAD comes with the following 3D drawing functions using polygon meshes:

Box Cone Dome

Sphere Pyramid Tube

NEW: 3D SURFACES
You can create 3D surfaces using the following polygon meshes:

Ruled Surface evolved Surface

Extruded Surface Tesselated Surface

NEW: ANNOTATIVE SCALING FEATURE
AllyCAD once again allows you to specify text, dimensions, arrows and block inserts as “mm on paper” regardless of scale. When you add a paperspace viewport, AllyCAD will automatically configure the viewport such that annotative objects in the viewport are drawn at the same size in “mm on paper” as they appear in the modelspace.

NEW: PRODUCTION DRAWINGS UPDATE ON THE FLY
Our system will also automatically generate all your final plans as dynamically updating layouts which will reflect all drafting changes instantly so that your design and production drawings are always in sync.

NEW: 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. AllyCAD can also read DGN, CEX, UCX, DRG and SHP files.

NEW: SHEETFILE EDITOR
Your production drawings are now dynamically updated as you change your design. Using the new powerful sheetfile concept, unique to AllyCAD, you can generate production drawings with detailed title blocks, north signs, grids, scale bars and much more so that your plotting requires minimal, if any, CAD editing. The sheetfiles can be created or edited using normal CAD functions in a vastly improved Editor. AllyCAD 2011 works seamlessly with version 3.6 sheetfiles as well.

NEW: VISUAL EDITORS
AllyCAD 2011 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.

NEW: CONTROL CENTRE
The Control Centre gives you quick and easy access to view and interact with styles, layers and objects in a drawing through a central interface.

Control Panel, Properties Bar & Output Bar

NEW: PROPERTY BAR (for entities)
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 them.

NEW: LAYOUTS
AllyCAD now has layouts that can contain viewports into the model space. If your model changes, so do your layouts.

NEW: 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 will be displayed automatically when results of an operation need to be presented to the user. Output can be printed or written to file.

NEW: TABLE & TOLERANCE ENTITY FUNCTION
The Table & Tolerance Entity function makes it a lot faster to draw tables and tolerances. Table styles can now simplify table formatting.

NEW: TEXT STYLES
Powerful use of text styles for drawing and customising text.

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 easily 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
Email support:
Telephonic support
Support Forum
Free updates

Did you know that AllyCAD HOME includes all the functionality of the AllyCAD Professional version. AllyCAD HOME is limited only in its drawing size capacity (300Kb) and is ideal for the hobbyist and small venture draughtsperson. Support is available via the Support forum. AllyCAD HOME is available for the nominal price of £36.00. Buy and 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.

NEW: ADVANCED SELECTION FILTER
In addition to the legacy selection filter dialog, which has been greatly streamlined, a new very powerful Advanced Selection Filter has been added.

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.

NEW: STYLE IMPORTER
The Style Importer allows you to import styles from external drawings. This is much quicker than trying to recreate the styles by hand.

NEW: FLYOUT TOOLBARS
The toolbars in AllyCAD 2011 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.



NEW: CAD ENTITIES ADDED
The following are just some of the new CAD entities that have been added:

3D Face Arc-Aligned Text Helix Lights 3D Polyline MLeader Multiline OLEFrame

Polygon Mesh Polyface Mesh Ray RText Spline Table Tolerance Wipeout

NEW: EXPLODE AND REPEATEDLY EXPLODE FUNCTION
This explode function breaks a compound entity (object) into its component entities (what it is made up of), while the repeatedly explode function will explode a compound entity to its base entities so that they can be edited.

NEW: COMPREHENSIVE PURGE FUNCTION
This function removes unused objects from the drawing. You can select what entities you wish to remove from the dialogue box.

NEW: DATABASE LINKAGE
Link drawing entities to external database records containing attributes. You can therefore store your data in an external database and display up to date data on your drawings without editing the drawings.

NEW: RIGHT CLICK CONTEXT SENSITIVE MENU
All our functions have a right click menu containing options specific to the current function. This will increase your drawing speed, because functions you are likely to use are easily accessible when you right click.

NEW: BLOCK BROWSER (Symbols)
Allows you to visually browse symbol files and drawings for blocks. Please note that we now refer to Blocks instead of Symbols.

NEW: OLE FRAME OBJECT FUNCTION
The new OLE Frame function 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.

IMPROVED: DIMENSIONING
Completely reworked dimensioning which is much easier to use and flexible than before. Dynamic dimension preview shows you exactly what the dimension will be before it becomes part of the drawing. You can also have different dimension styles per drawing.

IMPROVED: PLOTTING
New plotting function uses the powerful sheet file system, but generates layouts with viewports. Your production drawings will therefore automatically update as you change your design.

IMPROVED: VISUAL SNAPS
Visual snaps allow you to see where a snap will occur before you click. 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.

IMPROVED: GRAPHICAL EDITING
AllyCAD gives you easy graphical editing of all selected entities by either selection handles or nodes. This includes hatches, elliptical arcs and splines.

IMPROVED: USER INTERFACE & EASE OF USE
AllyCAD's user-interface has been made much more intuitive, consistent and user-friendly in the latest version.

IMPROVED: HATCH PERIMETER TRACKING ALGORITHM
Significantly improved hatch auto tracking for defining hatch boundaries. This includes more options such as tracking of selections and island detection and has been vastly improved in terms of speed and performance.



IMPROVED: GEOMETRY LINES FUNCTIONALITY & CIRCLES
We have retained the Geometry lines (a superset of construction lines) and circles that was in AllyCAD 3.6 but they now give better visual feedback when you are busy drawing and are more intuitive and easier to use.



IMPROVED: IMAGE HANDLING ABILITY & 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.

IMPROVED:FASTER REDRAWS
We have optimized our redraw routine to make redraws really fast which further improves your productivity.

IMPROVED: MOUSE WHEEL ZOOMING & PANNING
This helps you to quickly get to the part of the design that you need to work on with the mouse wheel.

and so much more...
 

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 and General Plans
• Automatically creates tabled and annotated SG diagrams
• Automatically scans and dimensions General Plans
• Create outside figure and reference mark tables
• Generates Sectional Title Plans
• Create block and floor Participation Quota (PQ) Schedules
• User specified splay wizard with off shoots

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 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.