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As we began to pull together our review of Nemetschek Systems' Allplan CAD software late last year, we got a well-written press release from Nemetschek, describing how Allplan had won a CAD ``shootout'' at the University of Illinois-Chicago last spring ``in terms of modeling, rendering, and animation functionality organized into one project under a single-user interface.''
We were particularly intrigued because most such tests are conducted by vendors themselves rather than independent groups, and because the test was handled by Kristine K. Fallon, FAIA. She's a consultant, an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and a contributor to this magazine. She's also a no-nonsense professional when it comes to CAD and CAD training. If she has any attachment, it is to IBM's A&ES CAD software--she helped develop it at SOM. But A&ES wasn't in the shootout.
The press release was accompanied by the full test report. Ethical companies and ethical testers do that sort of thing. The full report showed that the shootout wasn't a clean win. Allplan was run on a high-powered HP Unix computer. The AutoCAD version it was competing against was 12, not 13. The MicroStation version was 5.0, before the new ``PowerDraft'' interface was released. They were running on less powerful Pentiums. Datacad, the other package in the test, runs only in DOS--and costs less than $150.
An AutoCAD add-on, AutoArchitect, was unable...