Sometimes companies are quieter than they should be. Ilexsoft, from Italy, is one of those companies. Founded in 2002 by Andrea Suraci and his brother, Vincenzo and Giovanni, the brothers have created a small software development house focused on solutions for the AEC industry. The flagship product is HighDesign.
The company can count NASA, Genentech, CNR and the University of Vermont, among its major US-based customers. The company’s latest version is 1.8.7 so in essence a major full dot release is in the waiting. Still, when we last wrote about HighDesign we were impressed with its ability to keep adding many useful new features, maintain solid Autodesk DXF file support (import/export) and its high-quality TIFF support.
HighDesign Details
The latest release 1.8.7 is now Intel-only and runs on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or higher all the way to Lion, 10.7. Mountain Lion is not mentioned on the website. Architosh will be inquiring with Ilexsoft about this.
01 - Ilexsoft's HighDesign is an attractive 2D sub $500 CAD program aimed at the professional and academic markets. It's unique features include built-in image-editing and photogrammetry. The latest version is 1.8.7. (image courtesy Ilexsoft, all copyrights apply)
A fully functional trial version of HighDesign allows you to try it out for 12 hours of non-continual work. During the trial you can save, export and print out your projects (though print outs have a watermark). Open expiration save, copy and export are disabled but you can still run the application.
The latest HighDesign includes support for AutoCAD up to version 2012. This includes support of DWG and DXF files. The program can export PDF documents with CMYK or RGB colors and also exports high-resolution TIFF images.
HighDesign 1.8.7 is a 2D professional CAD program written exclusively for the Mac environment. It’s focus is on simplified and fast 2D CAD drawing with excellent presentation abilities. It also has built-in photogrammetry–something of importance to the European market and less key in the United States and elsewhere.
Every bit a design-oriented tool, the CAD program also has built-in image-editing tools so you can work with digital images within your project designs.
At the moment HighDesign Standard is just 99.USD while Professional is 249.USD. There are upgrades available and academic options for schools and universities. You can learn more here: http://www.ilexsoft.com/