ANVIL-1000MD® is a product of Interactive Design Consultants, Geneseo, Illinois

Much of the development in CAD software in recent years has been in the area of three-dimensional solids modeling systems, with parametric or variational design capabilities. These high-end packages are visually exciting and definitely have their place. But for every designer that can get comfortable with the concepts of topology, associativity and defining constraints, there are probably a dozen detailers that need no more horsepower than ANVIL- 1000MD® offers. The translators that are included with ANVIL-1000MD® encourage the transfer of two-dimensional views of the solids models, for detailing, annotation and tool design. There is even the ability to automatically detect and highlight the differences between revisions.

The phrases "ease of use" and "user friendly" have been applied to software so exhaustively, they have lost their meaning. The word that we have heard from casual and full-time ANVIL-1000MD® users alike, over the last nine years, is "intuitive". Partly this can be attributed to fully descriptive menu choices and messages, instead of the cryptic abbreviations and command sequences found in so many other products. Less obvious is the lack of restrictions on the functions that can be performed on geometry. You would assume that any CAD system could define a circular fillet between a pair of intersecting lines. But with ANVIL-1000MD® it could be a pair of points, lines, circular arcs, ellipses, splines or polygons, or any combination, without the user giving the issue a thought. This holds true for intersections, tangencies, chamfers and distances along a curve. While the benefits of this freedom are hard to quantify, it means that the user does not need to think ahead multiple steps to ensure that the geometry created can be used in the next construction. He or she just proceeds in a natural manner, rather than being constrained to work the way the software wants. Another benefit is that a user can easily pick up another's work to complete it or make revisions, without having to be concerned with how the drawing was constructed.

This lack of artificial restrictions is also apparent in ANVIL- 1000MD®'s annotation abilities. Numerous dimension forms can be applied to any appropriate geometry, conforming to your choice of the many national and international draughting standards. You can also convert a drawing from one standard to another in a matter of seconds. Complete geometric tolerancing, surface finish and weldment symbology is included so that no "hand-finishing" of drawings will be necessary.

Now, in Version 5, Anvil-1000MD® has a raft of important new features :-