DIAMOND - CAD for the professional

DIAMOND assumes that the production of a new drawing is usually only the initial step in an engineering process, and that the data supplied during drawing creation should, when necessary, be used during later stages of such a process. Consequently, it can analyse the geometric contents of drawings to produce accurate part lists, bills of material, or connectivity reports. This obviates the need for additional, often repeated, manual labour to achieve such goals, as well as the manual inspection of the obtained results.

DIAMOND offers innovative solutions to some of the tasks other CAD systems find difficult to deal with. A typical example is the solution to the problem of multi-scale drawings without requiring an awareness of concepts like model and paper space. These concepts have not found favour with most CAD users, who have simply refrained from using them. Consequently, most drawings are in 1:1 scale, with a scaling factor specified at a later stage to fit them into a nominated plot size. This requires operators to concentrate unduly on specification of non-geometric magnitudes like character sizes, hatch spacing or dimension arrows, having to take into account the final plotting scale. DIAMOND allows its users to specify a new scaling factor at any time. It automatically applies it to geometry manipulation, recognises non-geometric input, and assumes that its specification is already in paper space, removing the need to struggle with 'character sizes' or similar magnitudes. The system administrator can set a range of standard sizes, which can be automatically applied to all drawings, ensuring uniform drawing presentation levels.

DIAMOND does not insist that some entity modifications can only be achieved by their deletion followed by creation of new modified ones. After all, a system that can create a new item using specified attributes or parameters should be able to modify an existing one to achieve the same results. It therefore allows some unique operations such as changing orientation of linear dimensions between horizontal, vertical, slanted or any other angle, the reference axis for angular dimensions, or the general structure of note dimensions. It can handle insertion of new points into curves or polylines, new entities into hatch boundaries, or the removal of boundary elements from existing entities such as hatches.

DIAMOND does not insist that operations should only be applied to entities in their entirety. It can operate on entity sections, without first asking the user to split them into more manageable elements. DIAMOND accepts that users make mistakes and therefore helps to correct them. It can remove overlapping entities or amalgamate semi-overlapping ones, recreate entities that were mistakenly divided into small sections, dispense with redundant co-ordinates without changing existing geometry, and generate new polylines as a replacement to sequences of individual lines and polylines sharing common end points.

DIAMOND can quite often perform several tasks simultaneously. For example, it can copy a set of items, scale the generated replica, transfer the scaled entities to a different layer and finally change their line style, all in one operation. DIAMOND allows interactive graphical definition of drawing tools such as complex line types (patterns) and parameterised symbols. There is a frequent tendency to ignore the indirect benefits derived from such facilities. However, users who trust their CAD system and find that using it is relatively simple, are more likely to investigate its full functionality range. This obviously tends to ensure that they will benefit much more from the use of the CAD system.