

Lines might be different colors, dimensions might not display correctly, etc. When opening AutoCAD files or outputting files in AutoCAD’s DWG format, there could be anomalies in the files. The early AutoCAD workalikes failed primarily because the compatibility with DWG was not perfect. The offspring succeeded: members of the consortium subsequently launched dozens of workalikes, selling millions of copies.
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When it became clear in 1999 to the popular diagramming software company that their CAD program wasn’t selling in sufficient numbers, it set up a non-profit group it called the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium and then donated the code to them. The second workalike was also a failure, IntelliCAD 98 from Visio.

At the time, if you wanted a low-cost DWG editor, you’d just get Autodesk’s LT version of AutoCAD to be assured of file exchange compatibility with AutoCAD. Even though it was priced as low as AutoCAD LT, it failed. VDraft also featured a selection of AutoCAD-like commands, and it also offered functions now considered standard, but back then were novel: copy and paste, an at-cursor menu, and opening more than just one drawing at a time. VDraft from Softsource was in 1996, the very first CAD program to natively read and write DWG files, AutoCAD’s native format. The original AutoCAD workalike is likely long forgotten.
