[geeks] CAD and wireframes Was:This would make a good workstation

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 10:31:21PM -0700, Dave Kimmel wrote:

> Way back when I used CorelDRAW 4, there was an app in the suite called
> CorelTRACE which did this.  It produced passable results, but there was
> always some degree of cleanup required.  I never did anything serious with
> it though.
> 
> I'd imagine that between cleaning and enhancing the bitmap with
> PhotoPaint, running it through CorelTRACE, and cleaning up the result with
> CorelDRAW, you could probably get something usable.  Getting it into a CAD
> program is another story, but probably not a big hurdle.  I seem to
> remember CorelDRAW being able to import and export AutoCAD files, but I
> could be wrong.
> 
> A quick look at www.corel.com tells me that CorelTRACE is included in the
> CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.  This is only a bullet point on the "in the box"
> list though, so who knows if this has seen much updating since version 4.

Well, it has been at least ported to Win32 (since Version 4 was Win16).
I've done some usefull things with it, and line draws of the cad variety
should be particularly easy, but then, I don't really know what sort of
precision it can deliver, nor what you require.  I just know that with a
little tweaking, it can often be used nicely for quickly creating vector
art from some photos and many drawings.