Easier drawing from Aldus - Software Review - Aldus Corp. Consumer Division's IntelliDraw drawing program - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1992 by Mark (Consumer advocate) Green

IntelliDraw

Rating: * * *

AT A GLANCE: New, mid-level drawing program for Macintosh and Windows with many functions-slide shows, charting and graphing, animations-usually found only in separate presentation packages.

DOCUMENTATION: Tutorial is well written and covers the basics, but reference guide is full of jargon and contains mainly definitions rather than how-to explanations.

EASE OF USE: Easier to use than most drawing programs for the basics, but the learning curve increases dramatically for more advanced functions, such as object linking. SUPPORT: Fair. Since IntelliDraw is a new product, the technicians often put you on hold to find the answer to your question. It's a toll call, but if it takes too long, the technician will call back with the answer.

VERSION REVIEWED: 1.0 (Macintosh)

LIST PRICE: $299

AVERAGE STREET PRICE: $199

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 2MB Macintosh (4MB recommended); hard-disk drive; System 6.0.5 or higher (32-bit QuickDraw and Adobe Type Manager recommended). For Windows: 4MB IBM compatible (286 or higher; 386 recommended); hard-disk drive (80MB recommended); EGA card (VGA recommended); mouse; Windows 3.0 or higher (or Windows 3.0 with Adobe Type Manager 2.0) and DOS 4.0 or higher

PUBLISHER: Aldus Corp. Consumer Division, 9770 Carroll Center Rd., Suite J, San Diego, CA 92126-4551; (619) 695-6956, (800) 685-4161

Aldus has been pushing IntelliDraw as a drawing package that lets you create and alter drawings easily. I found IntelliDraw to be far more difficult than the ads make it seem, but easier and more intuitive than Illustrator or Freehand. Add some strong presentation features and a street price of under $200, and you've got a great value.

Groat first impression. Many of IntelliDraw's benefits come from its well-designed interface. Instead of having to dig through bifurcating menus, you can make common choices from a number of floating palettes. In Intellidraw, palettes let you easily choose tools, line weights and colors, and perform such common functions as combining two objects or making two lines the same length. You can also customize the palettes for each project. If you were drawing a gray city skyline, for instance, you could set up the Fills palette with a range of grays and the Line palette with black and gray lines of various widths.

When you tackle more complex operations, IntelliDraw presents you with requesters that are so intuitive and logical they leave you wondering why the same functions are so complicated in other programs. Instead of giving you written choices about how to align objects (such as "horizontal by top edges"), IntelliDraw presents you with pictures in a grid. Pictorial buttons along the side represent vertical alignment choices; similar buttons along the bottom represent horizontal alignment choices. These buttons provide a direct link between your mental image and the operation itself.

Of course, the program includes the standard drawing tools--the oval, square, and line--but Aldus has added some new ones that further simplify the drawing process. The "symetrigon," for instance, automatically draws the opposite side on a symmetrical object as you draw one side. This tool works well with simple objects, like a hammer's handle in a 1ogo I created, but drawing more complex objects tends to quickly get confusing because of the number of changes occurring on the screen at once.

Changing perspective. lntelliDraw also has an array of tools that produce connecting lines, a function that's helpful when you're handling three-dimensional objects. For instance, if you want to draw a cube, you can draw a square, copy it, then draw connecting lines from one square to the other. (Visual cues let you know when you're going to connect to the corner, at which point the line snaps into place automatically.) These connecting lines will stretch and rotate, but they stay glued to the corners of the squares, making it easy to play with perspective as you drag the cube around the page.

Presentation tools, too. And if simplified drawing isn't enough for you, IntelliDraw treads on the turf of presentation packages with tools, functions, and templates that let you easily create charts, graphs, slide shows, and simple animations. These features are pretty basic but, for my money, they're all you'll need in most situations. For example, you don't have the choice of the usual 26 fancy transitions you get with dedicated pre2-3, but IntelliDraw is well suited to creating USA Today-type bar charts (with drawings such as coins or cows making up the bars) from scratch.

IntelliDraw includes a large clip-art folder with 92 files of slides, charts, room plans, and more. These examples and templates are very well done, making it easy and time-efficient to plug in your information and go. While it's tempting to keep almost all of these handy, the weighty clip-art file takes up 6.5MB on your hard drive. (The program itself takes up almost 3.5MB .)

Is it right for you? IntelliDraw trades some precision for ease of use. If you are creating professional illustrations on a regular basis, stick with a full-blown drawing package such as Illustrator or Freehand. If you need only occasional graphics or presentations, IntelliDraw should serve your needs well for considerably less money.