Geoff Harrod

Don't remember seeing SmartSketch v1 or 2? Previously SmartSketch was called "Imagineer Technical". SmartSketch adds many new features to Imagineer v2, and the name change the product’s broader orientation, particularly its extra facilities for the diagramming market as well as precise CAD work.

I was always very impressed with Imagineer. It was an outstanding 2D CAD program, and a major advance on the  systems that had grown from DOS and Unix. Even the latest versions of such systems have persisted with their old ways, grafting modern conveniences onto old foundations. Imagineer, and now SmartSketch, was designed from the outset as a Windows application for modern hardware. It embodies working logic and control techniques that take maximum advantage of modern systems to provide the easiest and fastest ways of drawing.

‘Smart Symbols’ take the place of the old Blocks, Cells, etc commonly found in CAD systems, but in SmartSketch they have some ‘intelligence’, like the symbols, or ‘shapes’ in the modern diagramming software. Each symbol has a set of data and formulas associated with it that controls the way the symbol’s graphics react to the user’s manipulation. For example, dragging a placed symbol’s side handle to stretch it may result in an intelligent change to the symbol's representation. Instead of simply becoming wider it can be defined to respond to stretching by replicating itself as a linear array. Or its main outlines may stretch, but the internal details may retain their proportions and replicate to fill the new width. This capability makes possible far more complex and appropriate actions, yet controlled by simple and standard editing actions.

The basic idea in SmartSketch is to put as much control as possible right at the mouse cursor, accessed by a few simple methods. Part of this is a series of iconic symbols that appear next to the moving cursor point. These, together with temporary dotted guide lines, fleetingly show graphic relationships to existing drawing features and possible alignment or snap options to those features. If one of those is appropriate the operator can click to anchor the new point of whatever is being drawn to that snap. This system was developed some years earlier by Ashlar Vellum on the Macintosh and is used in SmartSketch with further refinements under licence. Most other CAD systems have recently adopted this idea but to mixed degrees and with mixed results. It is implemented to its maximum degree in SmartSketch and in a very intuitive and clear manner. It makes drawing extremely easy and quick.
SmartSketch full screen view. Note to the right the Symbol Explorer with tree view, symbol view and Attribute Viewer.

In v3.0 there are many small new items of a basic CAD nature such as enhanced grid and grid-snap options, and an offset facility that operates on both single line elements and multiple elements while maintaining any predefined object relationships.

Drawing Tools
Drawing walls in plan is made easy by a double-line drawing option that automatically cleans up corners and intersections. Hyperlinks can be placed in the drawing to link to other drawings or documents.

Symbols have been made easy to find and place by a drag-&-drop panel called Symbol Explorer that displays sets of symbols as miniature images. Several sets are supplied ready made, grouped to suit various industries or diagramming fields. There are about 7,500 engineering and business symbols provided. The Symbol Explorer can also be used for manipulating elements in other documents, disks, network or web, as well as symbols.

Dimensioning has been expanded. It was always very simple to do, and the dimensions remained firmly linked to the objects they measured so that they always updated to reflect changes to the geometry. But now, there are more options for appearance and accuracy and good support for tolerances.

‘Connect-points’ can be defined on symbols if relevant, so that other symbols or connecting lines can snap onto those and hold their attachment even if the symbols need to be dragged around to a different layout. The connecting lines rearrange themselves in orthogonal routes that are usually sensible.

A line is being drawn (the diagonal one on the right) and the mouse is dragging it to set an end point for the new line. Where the mouse is being held at this moment the line-end is on a projection of an existing line. The existing line in the relationship has turned red fleetingly and its projection is being shown dotted. The symbol that had popped up at the cursor position indicates the "Point on element" snap relationship.

All the programmed ‘smart’ behaviors of SmartSymbols can be altered by users. Variants can be produced by copying standard symbols and modifying the copies. Of course you can also draw entirely new symbols and build new behaviors into them, quite easily.

You can turn the various snaps and relationship indications on or off, and shows the symbols and their meanings.

There is now a facility for drawing ‘pictorial’, ‘3D perspective-like’ or Isometric views very easily. This is purely a 2D system, so the result is a flat drawing as would be done on paper. You can’t ‘turn it round’!

Fonts
SmartSketch uses TrueType fonts exclusively for text. Intergraph supply a very good set of TrueType fonts that are appropriate for drawing work. Since TrueType fonts are installed as a Windows resource they are all usable in any application program, and of course SmartSketch can use any fonts already on the system as well as the new ones.

There are a few text styles derived from manual pen practice that have become de facto standards in drafting, notably the American LeRoy stencils (now called ANSI) and German Rotring (now called ISO). Some other CAD products have provided very poorly formed TrueType equivalents of those. The ones provided by Intergraph are correctly formed as enclosed outlines that automatically infill and get thicker as the height is increased. There are fonts for both the ANSI and ISO standards, plus a ‘chisel-like’ arty style that architects developed for hand lettering with the old Graphos pen nibs held sideways.

Intergraph ANSI TrueType font

Intergraph ISO TrueType font

Intergraph Architectural TrueType font

Database Links
All drawing elements can be linked to a database system very easily. That is still a task that requires expert programming skills or complex add-in software in some CAD systems. The links can be to cells in Excel spreadsheets, or to fields in Microsoft Access, Foxpro, dBase, Paradox, or Btrieve databases, or to text files.

Customization
Considerable customization is possible by using Visual Basic. An extensive on-line programming guide with many example code snippets details the set of VB functions and variables that comprise its API (Application Programming Interface).

File Format Compatibility
SmartSketch lets you read AutoCAD DWG and MicroStation DGN files. It can use DWG or DGN files as reference insertions within a SmartSketch drawing or by importing into the SmartSketch drawing. If the data from the other system is altered or added to, you can update the original source file. So a SmartSketch drawing can incorporate data from those two systems quite flexibly. It can also save the whole work to those formats, although naturally the ‘smarts’ in the symbols will be lost in the process. DWG is supported to R14 and DGN to SE/J versions.

In addition to integration of those two other CAD formats, raster data can be incorporated using ImageScape LT which is included. This is particularly useful for tracing over a scanned drawing image.

Conclusion
In its new SmartSketch v3.0 form it very ably combines the best features of highly intuitive CAD drawing with the latest ideas on diagramming. It serves both fields of work in the fullest and most flexible ways, and can therefore avoid the need to have separate programs for those two types of work. Previously, diagram oriented systems had some, but limited, precise, scaled CAD capability, and good CAD systems were generally not very easy to use for diagramming. This does both equally well.

Imagineer was never very widely known or promoted. Hopefully the change of name will engender a new surge of promotion, as this system deserves to be widely known and used. It is truly a delight to use.

Geoff Harrod