Low Cost CADD/Cogo Software Advice

[Lee Hixson]

Has anyone tried progeCADD and progeEARTH Civil/Survey?

Looks to me to be a very good package for under $1K. Just wondering if anyone has purchased it and used it for a while.

http://www.progecad.us/index.pl?id=3545

[RCS]

Never heard of it but it looks pretty good from the videos I found on youtube. Might be worth experimenting with. At the very least it imports/exports XML data which I believe almost every CAD platform can utilize.

[mpallamary]

I am a huge fan of PROCOGO by AGT. I have used their COGO program for years and think it is the best deal out there for cost and ease of use. They have some kind of CAD accessory but I have never used it.

[Frank Romano PLS]

I have demo'd ProgeCADD and think it is definitely a great Intellicad product. Intellicad is much cheaper than AutoCAD but almost identical in look, feel and operation. I have been using different versions of Intellicad for at least 15 years and am extremely satisfied. I currently use CMS Intellicad with CogoSoftware . Only because it was a little less expensive than ProgeCADD and I didn't need the Civil part.. When I was originally looking at Intellicad over Autocad, I downloaded their 30-day demo and used it on one of my jobs. I was immediately sold. I suggest you do the same if they still have the 30-day demo.

[Lee Hixson]

Frank...

I am taking advantage of their demo right now. So far, so good. I'll report back again after I've spent more time with it.

[Jim Frame]

Intellicad is much cheaper than AutoCAD but almost identical in look, feel and operation. I have been using different versions of Intellicad for at least 15 years and am extremely satisfied. I currently use CMS Intellicad

This doesn't jive with my experience at all. I tried CMS IntelliCAD a couple of years ago, and found the look-and-feel to be very different from that of AutoCAD -- "cheesy" is the word that comes to mind. I found command and mouse response slower, and the AutoLISP implementation flawed.

The experience drove me back to AutoCAD for a year or so, but last spring I decided to look at alternatives again. Even though Bricsys had left the IntelliCAD Consortium, I had heard enough praise for BricsCAD to give it a try, and I'm very glad that I did. Although the interface is slightly different from AutoCAD's, I had no trouble putting BricsCAD to immediate use, and it proved to be snappy and decidedly "uncheesy." Better yet, the AutoLISP implementation is superb, even better than AutoCAD's. (I rely heavily upon a library of custom AutoLISP functions in my work, so this was essential to me.) I've been using BricsCAD for production work ever since, and am quite pleased with it.