"We are very excited about the release of the beta version," says Owen, the Overseas Dept. Director at ZWCAD Software.  "We are releasing the official version of the product for sale in less than a month, but customers can download the beta and test its functionalities right now.  The development of the product is driven by customers, so any feedback and suggestions are welcome!"

Built on InteliCAD 6 and based on the OpenDWG technology, ZWCAD lets users open, edit and save DWG/DXF files created in Autodesk AutoCAD (2.5 to 2008) without the need for import or export operations.  Because there is no file conversion, there is no data loss.  With the same ease, the users of AutoCAD can open the files created in ZWCAD.  The interface of the program with all its cursors, toolbars and menus meets the standards of AutoCAD.  Therefore the move to ZWCAD from the software of the other companies is easy and requires no training.  The software is aimed at architects, consultants, engineers, and teachers.

The software has been adopted by over 60,000 users from 60 countries.  Its corporate users include the companies such as Alcatel, Honda, Hitachi, Panasonic, Citizen, and GP.  The company has partnerships and works in close collaboration with IntelliCAD, Intel, Microsoft, Spatial, Open Design Alliance, and Lenovo.

Improved Flexibility and Efficiency

ZWCAD 2008 Beta includes several new features to help users quickly get the best CAD design experience ever.  Key new features include:

- Enhanced speed in save, open, viewports, select, hatch: the program offers users enhanced performance, especially when they open or save a drawing, create a hatch with complex boundaries, edit in viewports.  Users can select from a great number of objects that let them spent less time on drafting and more on design.

- Brand-new arithmetic for hatch boundary search: a brand-new arithmetic applied to search complex hatch boundaries ensures less calculation and faster response even when there are many complicated objects used.  Unlocked boundaries in some diseased drawings are recognized automatically.

- Attribute extraction: The program enables extraction of the attribute information into an external file if the attributes have been attached to blocks.  Attribute extraction is a practical function to produce a schedule or bill of materials directly from the blocks in a drawing.

- Better APIs.  Firstly, there is DRX support.  With the new DRX programming interface, you can develop your own application in another way as you like.  It makes migration of ARX application possible.  (Customized Entities is not supported in the current version).  Secondly, there is Visual lisp Support and lisp Encrypt.  In ZWCAD 2008, there are two modes for encryption: AES and 3AES.  You can not only encrypt several lisp files together, but also create a backup or use a different extension for the encrypted file.

- Design center: Improved design center offers you an easy management of drawings, blocks, dimension styles, and other drawing content.  You can drag content from any source drawing to your current drawing.  Source drawings can be on your computer, on a network location.  In addition, you can also search drawings under your specified condition, including name and size of the drawings.

Pricing & Availability

ZWCAD 2008 Beta is available immediately from ZWCAD Software.  The product runs on Windows 2000, XP, and VISTA. 

www.zwcad.org