Draft and Detail Efficiently

Smart Tools for Quick Drafting

Multi-line leaders

Sometimes you need different types of leaders, or even different kinds of arrowheads for the same callout. With the multiple-line leader function, you can customize the leader style, and then create more than one leader at a time.

Multi-line leaders

Fields

Sometimes you need to update textual information in drawings. This painstaking task is solved with the field function. It updates information for you automatically.

Fields

Breaking Dimension Lines

Dimension lines inevitably cross with other objects. To make drawings more clear, the dimension break function breaks dimension lines where they cross other lines -- without splitting the lines. This means that broken dimension lines are still easy to adjust.

Dimension Break

FCMP

When you need to find differences between two similar-looking drawings, the filecompare function helps you do this. It highlights differences by color coding changedobjects, blocks, and even external references.You can customizethe comparison settings, such as colors and filters.

Drawing Compare

Solid Profiles

The solid profiles feature creates profiles of 3D solids with ease. You can specify 2D and 3D profiles. Hidden and visible lines are placed onto different layersautomatically.

Solid profile

Dynamic Prompt

The dynamic prompt interface displaysrelatedcommand namesat the cursor. Both new and experienced users will find the alphabetical list of command names useful, because it reduces the time to remember and input commands.

Dynamic prompt

Efficient Tools for Precise Drafting

Parametric and Constraints

The parametric and constraints functions are powerful tools that enable you to create and modify families of objects in remarkably quick time, as compared with traditional redrawing in CAD. When you make a modification to a family of parametric objects, the action affects and drives the related objects by changing them together. Parametric and constraints ensure the objects always maintain their shape and/or measurements.

Parametric and Constraints

Table

The table feature lets you easily create neat and beautiful tables just in a single step; there is no need to draw cells from lines to form tables manually. In-place editing allows you to edit the contents of table cells, just as if you were working in Microsoft Excel. In addition,tables can export and import data files to and from Excel spreadsheets.

Table

Object Snap

The object snap function helps you draw and edit to geometric features accurately. In ZWCAD 2012, the speed and accuracy of object snaps are improved greatly, especially for large drawings.

Object Snap

Aerial View

Pan and zoom large drawings quickly with the handy aerial view window, which displays the entire drawing all the time, therebyhelping you locate any zoomed-in location immediately.

Aerial View Window

Sharing Resources for Improving Productivity

Blocks

The block functionturnsmultiple objects into one, allowing you tostandardize drawing components. This means that you canreuse them in other drawings.

In addition, data can be embedded in blocks. Known as attributes, the data can consist of any kind of textual information, such as inventory numbers, prices, and multi-linedetailed descriptions.

External References

The external references function provides a more efficient way of sharing and reusing drawings. You can insert entire .dwgfiles into drawings; these are known as "external references"or "xrefs" for short. The child xref can be inserted into multiple host drawings, and then be synchronizedany time the xref changes. Inserting xrefsdoes not increase the size of thehostdrawing by very much.

Raster images

Attaching raster images to your drawings better shows off your designs, ZWCAD supportsnumerous image formats, including BMP, TIF, GIF, JPG, PNG, PCX, and TGA. New in ZWCAD 2012 is support for ECW, a format used in mapping.

OLE (Object Linking and Embedding)

Linking and embedding objects into drawingsenables youto take full advantage of placing data from other applications. You can insert movie clips, spreadsheets, documents, and just aboutany other kind of data into drawings.

Block, xref, and raster image

Management Data for Convenient Manipulation

Design Center

The Design Center function allows you to searchand accessanyCAD resource stored on your computer -- even on other computers onthe local network. It helps you to insert contentinto the current drawing, such asdimension styles, blocks, text styles, line types, and even layers from other drawings.

Tool Palettes

The Tool Palettes function provides an efficient way to organize, share, and store "tools,"such as blocks, hatch patterns, entities, and even content from third-party developers.

Design Center and Tools Palette

Managing Layers

Layers are used to standardize the content of drawings. By changing the properties of layerswith the Layer PropertiesManager, you effortlessly control how objects are displayed and plotted. Layers simplifythe visual complexity of drawings, therebyclarifying the structure.

Layer Properties Manager