TAD Docs

If you came here after clicking the tabs of the ribbon menu, learn more about the UI we have

You can start a new model by using the appropriate item from the File menu or from the File ribbon bar… Or you can open an existing TAD file.

If you have no clue about TAD; examine the various TAD samples we have given in this installation. Those sample files can be examined to build up your confidence. Some of those files are in early stages of designing, some are in later stages. All those files are in a folder called TADSamples and that folder is available in the main folder where you installed TAD (Usually; C:\Program Files(x86)\TAD Designer Lite)

Here are some simple points you can easily adopt:
1. Forget all that you know about CAD (Computer AIded Drafting) or conventional BIM (Building Information Modelling) TAD started way back in around 1989 and kept improving from there. So it went along a different path

2. You NEVER get lost inside TAD! A text editor (or a wordprocessor) tells your place inside it by showing you a blinking vertical line called a “caret” On similar lines, TAD gives you avatars of 3 people helping you in your modelling. One represents an architect on the site. The other two are helpers. They are always present somewhere or the other in the model. You can shift these avatars to communicate to the application what are you focussed on. As these avatars are moved around, TAD displays several information in the Site pane (Usually placed to the left of the screen) that would help you take decisions. When someone is working on TAD, it is quite easy for others to stand around and look at what's happening on the monitor and actually follow what is going on. Other CAD or BIM software do not have such 'avatars'. Others gathering around a monitor would not know what is happening in that CAD/BIM work going on there!

3. TAD always wants closed shapes! This can confuse CAD users who expect to “stitch” up a shape using graphic entities. For example; in CAD you would create a L shape room either by drawing a line segment for each edge of the room or by using a Polyline (which is also a series of connected lines)

TAD does not work that way. TAD works with objects. An “object” means any shape that has a real world meaning for the designer. When you create an “object” in TAD , it starts its life as a closed shape (usually a rectangle) – You can then shift/move corners/add corners/stretch etc; even convert some straight edges to curves, to reshape that starting shape to the one that you want.

TAD always wants well-formed shapes for its objects. If you delete one side of a rectangle; and expect the rest of the sides of the rectangle to remain where they were, then the resultant shape will no longer be a well formed rectangle (it will be open and not closed) – so all such activities are simply not possible in TAD. Initially some people may find this odd; but later on it becomes clear that this saves a huge amount of time and it is very logical too. After all nothing in the world around has a boundary or edge missing!

Read my lips: In TAD, you cannot delete a single line. You can remove the entire object but not any line in the object. You can delete a corner, if you want but then the edges again re-arrange themselves to once again form a closed shape; albeit a different one than before.

Imagine stretching a closed rubber band around 4 of your fingers. When you remove one of the fingers (to delete that corner), the rest of the rubber-band will now form a triangle – another closed shape. Keep this rubber banding process in your mind and you will know what to do.

4. In TAD you often do NOT have to draw walls! Internal walls of a building are formed by shifting the spaces around those walls away from each other. You do not actually draw the walls themselves. Then you wrap the entire set of internal spaces with another space kept at an offset distance. Magically, you will see that you now have both the external wall as well as all the internal walls!

5. Tell you what? Instead of reading here, an easier way to learn TAD, is to simply load the “Tip of the dialog” and go through each tip systematically and in order. This Tips dialog is shown right at the beginning. If you close it, you can open it again from the Help menu/ribbon bar.

Do share your feedback on our Discord community (teamTAD) You can also get in touch with the main developer; architect Sabu Francis sabu@teamtad.com