TAD Docs

CAD or Computer Aided Drafting (Often wrongly pronounced as Computer Aided Designing — CAD does not do any designing. Only drafting) is often synonymous with AutoCAD.

TAD was written long before the current UI CAD standards were set.When CAD did become popular; in our little corner of the world; we were quite productive anyway designing instead of merely drafting. Hence we never changed the UI to the so-called CAD standards. In fact, TAD has much less learning to do and it does a huge lot with a very few set of actions that you need to learn.

Here are the main differences between TAD and CAD (This topic is being written, and many points will be added; as indeed the differences are huge)

• CAD uses a three step thinking process to do any action:
  1. First you need to think of the shape you want
  2. Then you break down that shape in your mind and choose the creation/editing commands you want to use in CAD
  3. Then you would actually carryout that command and sit back and admire your creation The shape you had in mind indeed is now available on the screen too

TAD does not need you to think of the first step. When you create a shape – it starts off as a rectangle or a square or a triangle (depending on the initial dimensions you gave) TAD gives a placeholder shape. You can return back at your time and edit it till it forms the shape you had in mind

• TAD similates three persons found on a construction site. One is the architect and the other are two helpers. These virtual persons help you a lot in carrying out various actions as you create and edit your design. CAD does not have any such role-playing symbols on the screen to help you with your drafting.

• CAD uses snap in a very different way than what happens in TAD. In CAD, there are quite a lot of ways to snap to the point you need as you keep drafting precisely. In CAD, such needs happen just-in-time i.e. as you are in the middle of some creation or editing. In TAD, you would snap the architect before you want to carry out some creation or editing action on your design