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Apollonius PDT

Revolutionary 2D CAD

Apollonius PDT (Parametric Design Tool) represents a significant step forward in desktop CAD. It provides a brand new way of creating technical drawings on computers.

As CAD systems have become more capable over the years, their complexity has also grown and they have tended to spawn vast user interfaces, even the best of which still have huge numbers of icons and menus from which to select the various features the CAD systems offer. Indeed, an entire publishing industry has grown to support the best selling CAD applications.

Apollonius PDT dispenses with the complex user interface and instead, uses a series of highly complex algorithms to allow the software to decide intelligently what precisely the user wishes to draw. In this way, a single ‘line’ tool can produce all possible line variants including angled, parallel, perpendicular, tangent and, in fact, all combinations of these. The user does not need to change tools, select modifiers from menus or choose different snap types simply clicking the mouse at the natural position in the drawing will cause Apollonius PDT to generate the precise geometric construction required. The same principles hold true for the ‘point’ and ‘circle’ tools.

Having created the underlying construction work for a drawing, other CAD systems then present the user with another vast array of options for creating short line segments, arcs and so on, to make up the real outline of the drawing.

Again, Apollonius PDT simplifies this process with a single ‘ink’ tool which - will automatically create the correct types of object as you click the mouse around the outline of your construction work.

Similarly, all possible dimension variants, such as linear, parallel, radius, diameter, angle and so on, are all generated from the one dimension tool. The software calculates the type and style of dimension required from the positions the mouse clicks occur in the drawing. Apollonius PDT uses RISC OS fonts and, as you may now expect, can generate horizontal text, text following a line and text following a circle from a single tool.

This ‘minimal -user interface’, combined with the multiple document/multiple view editing environment and standard use of hot keys for everything from copy to zoom, allows drawings to be generated at great speed and requires a much lower level of expertise from the user.

Instead of using layers, as found in old fashioned CAD systems, Apollonius PDT utilises a much more powerful and versatile system of styles and effects. This still allows the visibility and selectabililty of drawn objects to be controlled, but additionally allows all aspects of the style of the objects to be manipulated - either locally, using effects or globally, using named styles. Attributes such as colour (24 bit), line width, line pattern, font, font size can be altered using styles and effects, and objects may have multiple styles and effects applied to them.

As a drawing tool Apollonius PDT is without equal. However what makes Apollonius PDT a powerful design tool is the parametric nature of the drawing. Whereas normal CAD systems store drawing information in terms of the coordinates of the elements in the drawing, Apollonius PDT stores the relationships between the elements, providing three key benefits to the user:

1. Editing the drawing, particularly repositioning or resizing objects, is greatly simplified, since all the repercussions of making a change are automatically recalculated by the software. For example, consider a line defined as being perpendicular to another line and tangent to a circle. In a normal CAD system, if the radius of the circle is changed, the line stays where it is and needs to be edited separately to make it tangent to the circle again. In a complex drawing, resizing an object can mean that hundreds of edits need to be made to get the drawing back as it should be. This fact (equally valid with paper based drawing) discourages refinements to designs because of the large amount of work involved. In Apollonius PDT, because the relationships between the elements are stored, the drawing is instantly recalculated. The line moves so that it remains perpendicular to the original line and is tangent to the circle at its new size. No matter how many objects need to be recalculated, the drawing will automatically be updated so that it still obeys what in effect are the design rules given to it when it was created.

2. Where a series of drawings of geometrically similar objects is required (eg a set of spanners or a sequence of metric nuts) only one drawing needs to be generated. Variable names can be allocated to the key values that control the dimensions of the drawing (eg the AF distance of the spanner jaws) and the values of these variables can simply be changed to generate the required sized object.

3. Drawings of mechanical systems can actually be made to work. If, for example, you create a drawing of an internal combustion engine and then alter the angle of the crankshaft, the conrod and piston will move accordingly, the camshaft will rotate and the valves will operate, compressing their springs as they do. In fact, advanced users can take advantage of the mathematical functions available within Apollonius PDT to calculate forces, velocities and accelerations within a system. SnapHappy (included with Apollonius PDT) allows animations to be made from Apollonius drawings.

Drawfiles and Apollonius PDT files may be inserted into drawings and attached to items within the drawing so that, for example, a construction skeleton of a mechanical linkage can quickly be generated in Apollonius PDT and then the elements within the linkage can be ‘fleshed out’ by inserting drawfiles and connecting them to the appropriate points in the drawing.

Apollonius PDT outputs to a wide range of printers (all printers supported by RISC OS), plotters (including HPGL, Graphtec, Plotmate) and CNC devices (including Roland CAMM) using the Draw Print & Plot software provided.