WildTools

The introduction of WildTools for PowerCADD in the early 1990s created a great deal of excitement in the Macintosh CAD community. Suddenly users had drawing tools that easily matched or exceeded the capabilities of high-end CAD and illustration programs. The high-end programs were left in the dust, and Macintosh users finally had drawing tools to make their PC friends green with envy. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about WildTools is how unassuming and familiar they seem at first glance. You can begin to draw immediately, without a glance at the manual, as in the most basic 'draw' programs, yet it's apparent from the beginning that the tools have enormous power and capabilities. For example, all CAD programs have a fillet tool, which you quickly discover will only work with lines and circles. The WildTools fillet tool will fillet anything to anything, thus you can fillet a rotated elliptical arc to a parallel spline inside a group. All illustration programs have a tool to draw Béziers, yet without exception they depend on a confusing array of key-press combinations to manipulate the curves. The WildTools Pen tool is unlike any other. It's infinitely more powerful than the typical pen tool, yet also the easiest to us by far. This is the heart of the WildTools/PowerCADD combination, where the distinctions of CAD and illustration vanish in thin air. This is drawing at its best lines and curves on paper and it matters little whether you're drawing an office building, a helical gear, a map, or a flower. In all, there are over 200 powerful tools in WildTools, and the result is a spectacular advance in the state of the art. If you've spent any time drawing on a computer, you know that frustrations are an integral part of the process. As you draw, some things go smoothly and then you'll have that old feeling of walking in quick sand as you hit some part of the drawing that you can't do easily. WildTools may not end all frustrations, but it certainly will end the most common ones involved in drafting. Once you experience drafting with WildTools, you can never go back, but bring a whip and a chair.