The CAD Rating Guide

WBH Associates is preparing an expanded sixth edition of The CAD Rating Guide^®. The CAD Rating Guide^® is a tool for evaluating CAD systems, and contains information on most CAD systems on the market today. It also includes Geographic Information Systems, Finite Element Modelers, and Animation systems where these systems create their own geometry. (Printed-circuit board and integrated circuit design systems are not included.) This survey is the basis of a large portion of your entry in the book. A limited number of copies of the fourth edition are available for your review.

The sixth edition will contain approximately 150 CAD systems, including yours. Your participation is required to assure proper representation. There is no cost involved—just the time necessary to fill out the survey form. WBH will do its utmost to maintain the validity and quality of information presented. Please be as thorough as possible in your answers. An electronic version of this form can be made available on request.

An important part of your presentation in The CAD Rating Guide^® is the section based on the USER SURVEY included along with this form. Please put a link from you website to the USER SURVEY on this website (http://www.wbh.com/crgus.html) and promote it as heavily as you can, especially to your best users—we want you to have as strong a showing as possible in the book. You might even send a broadcast email message to your users directing them to participate. An additional alternative is the for you to download the print version of the USER SURVEY form, reproduce it,  and get it in the hands of as many of your best users as possible. Distributing the USER SURVEY to your users groups is also strongly recommended. There is no deadline for the user surveys—if they come in too late to make this edition, they will be used for the following edition next year.

Please note that we are in the process of revising this website and it is likely that the Vendor Survey form will be available live on this website. If you have questions about the book, this survey, or the process please contact me via email at Vendor-Surveys@wbh.com.or by fax at 301-365-4586. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

W. Bradley Holtz
Editor and Publisher

Download surveys in PDF format to print, fill out, and mail in. You may supplement your hardcopy vendor survey with an email version of the narrative portions. The text version may be useful for that purpose.

• Download the Vendor Survey (PDF file - 519K)
• View a portion of the Vendor Survey (the narrative sections)
  
• Download the User Survey (PDF file - 100K)

To read the PDF files, you'll need to be sure you have a copy of the Adobe Acrobat reader, which can be downloaded for free

• View the Online version of the User Survey

In order to qualify for inclusion, a product must be a CAD system, able to be run independent of any other CAD system. It must contain tools to create and modify vector-based graphic images. The following minimum functions are prerequisites for inclusion:

Graphic entities: point, line, arc, dimension string, text
Entity attributes: color, layer (or hierarchical structure), linetype
Control modes (snapping): free, grid, intersection, endpoint
Manipulation tools: move, copy, erase, stretch, rotate
Display controls: recallable views, zoom, pan + some means for saving and manipulating sets of graphic elements (symbol, block, cell,...)
+ able to save and plot drawings, or output to film or video

Systems designed solely for electronic engineering (integrated circuits, circuit boards...) are excluded. The criteria may be relaxed slightly to allow a new group of products to be included. Systems for animation and rendering, GIS, and finite element modeling are included in this book where those systems generate original geometry.

For more information, e-mail us at crg@wbh.com.

ZEM Press
8220 Stone Trail Drive
Bethesda MD 20817-4556
+301-365-4585
+301-365-4586 fax

This page last updated on Saturday, March 30, 2002