Benefits of ARES
ARES Commander is designed to be compatible with all of existing DWG and DXF files. The program has its own command structure, yet uses aliases to be compatible with many of the commands and variables found in other CAD programs like AutoCAD and IntelliCAD.
The user interface with its ribbon, palettes, and command bar will probably look immediately familiar
to you. The program has all the standard 2D drawing and editing commands, like Line and Trim, as well
as advanced functions like associative dimensioning and annotative scaling. The program creates and
modifies 3D ACIS-based solid drawing objects, and can apply geometric and dimensional constraints on
and between entities.
Graebert used its three decades of experience in the CAD business to build the program from scratch,
employing the most current computer programming technology. The program offers you a number of
significant benefits.
Impressive Compatibility
The program uses DWG as its primary file format for storing drawings. It incorporates the Teigha DWG
engine from the Open Design Alliance, and so it reads and writes DWG and DXF files from as far back as
R12 to as recently as R2018.
The program exchanges data in a wide range of CAD and graphics file formats, such as ACIS SAT, PDF, DGN,
and SVG. When needed, it protects your data investment by recovering DWG and DXF files that may have
become damaged.
Familiar User Interface
The user interface is built on Qt technology (the same used in AutoCAD), complete with ribbon, dockable toolbars and palettes, menu bar, right-click menus, aliases, and shortcut keystrokes. You can change the user interface to suit your needs without any programming, yet programmers can define and manage user interfaces elements through XML resources. You can create and store multiple configurations to adapt the user interface to the needs of specific projects. The program offers mouse gestures to access commonly-used commands directly on the screen: just hold down the right mouse key while you move the mouse in one of eight directions. In addition, the 3D mouse from 3Dconnexion is supported for 3D modeling.
Drafting Tools
The program contains the kind of smart drafting tools you expect to find today’s CAD software, such as
a multitude of entity snap modes, on-screen assistance from tracking, and polar guides. When drawing
in 3D, the program automatically relocates the coordinate system to align the construction plane with
object faces.
Using grips, you can reposition, align, copy, and resize entities. Filtering modifies selection sets of entities.
The Properties palette lets you manipulate geometry directly, as well as the properties of entities — including their layer names, colors, line styles, and line weights. The Property Painter conveniently copies
properties from one entity to others.
Dimensions, hatches, and gradient fill all are associative, which means they update automatically as you
change them. To ensure that drawings conform to industry standards, you create styles for dimensions,
text, tables, and rich lines (multiline). Add notes, tables, leaders, geometric tolerances, and text attributes
to annotate drawings. The scale of annotative objects can be set to equal the plot scale. Drawing resources
are accessed from other computers through the Drawing Resource manager.
Collaboration
Drawings can be shared, viewed, and edited on any platform, including tablets and smartphones, Web browsers, and laptop and desktop computers. ARES Commander, Kudo, and Touch support the most popular cloud file storage services, such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud. Drawings and images can be attached to drawings as references, which let you share files among workgroups. Referenced drawings can be clipped to show just portions of them.
Mark up drawings with freehand sketches, revision clouds, and mask portions as needed. The Options center manages all drafting and system preferences in a single location. Profiles let you store and restore multiple user settings, while UI profiles let you switch instantly between customized user interfaces.
Flexible Viewing
The program lets you view drawings at different angles in multiple viewports, such as with standard orthogonal and isometric views. Three-dimensional models can be shaded differently in each viewport and
rolled about in 3D space interactively. Display modes can be in wireframe, with hidden lines removed, flat shaded, or Gouraud shaded. Models can be rendered to fullscreen or in a separate window. Light sources make the model look more realistic. Entities and layers can be made semi-transparent to emphasize other parts of drawings.
Organized Layouts
Drawings can be organized into multiple tiled layouts using tabbed sheets. Each tiled viewport can show
the model at a different scale and different viewpoint. Drawing borders, title blocks, and equipment lists
can be placed on sheets as required. You can switch between model and paper space with just a double-click. Each sheet can determine a different style of printing or plotting. Page layouts save and reuse print settings for printers and plotters.
Solid Modeling
The program includes a 3D solid modeler based on ACIS, which supports 3D solid primitives, Boolean
operations, slicing and intersecting solids. You can edit edges, faces, and bodies of 3D solids. You can extrude or revolve 2D entities into 3D models, sweep 2D entities along paths, and loft between 2D entities. Regions transform areas into 3D solids.
Parametric Constraints
To make parametric drawings, the Windows version of the program includes dimensional constraints, 2D
geometric constraints and parameters (expressions) licensed from the Spatial division of Dassault Systemes. Dimensional constraints let you specify the sizes of objects and distances between them. Geometric constraints act like entity snaps that are sticky, keeping entities parallel or concentric to each other, perfectly horizontal or vertical, and so on.
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