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Elecosoft has just released a new version of Arcon, a complete CAD solution dedicated for architects, building professionals and designers. Arcon Evo is a powerful, standalone 2D and 3D CAD program for all types of building design - from residential to large scale developments. It provides a comprehensive set of tools suitable for all aspects of building design, enabling the user to draw buildings to levels suitable for planning submissions, add detailing and produce working drawings for building control.

Arcon Evo follows the success of Arcon Visual Architect, one of the leading architectural 2D and 3D CAD programs in Europe since the 1990's, and which continues to provide a simple, efficient solution for planning and visualising building projects.

"Arcon Evo software offers significant new updates for designing the exteriors and interiors of buildings," comments Arcon product manager for the UK, Tim Bates. "With a modern user interface, multi-functional toolset, advanced editing capabilities and powerful new engine, detailed plans, elevations and section views can be rapidly drawn on screen and viewed in a fully interactive 3D environment."

Tim adds, "The strength in our new CAD software is its ability to make it as easy as possible for architects and designers to communicate their design ideas to the client and anyone else involved in the building project, so that everyone is clear about what is being proposed thus avoiding costly mistakes along the way."

Arcon Evo includes many enhancements over its older CAD system, the most striking being the changes to the user interface. The graphical icon display now has three variants to choose from including colour/ b/w icon display with/without labels.

Whichever variant you decide to work in, the interface has been specially designed so let you draw in a more flexible environment than ever before. The modular toolset presents tools and icons for specific elements of the design in a logical manner. Easily identifiable, each tool guides the user through a particular part of the design process and will be familiar to users of Windows-based software.

Additionally, each tool can be customised and adapted to your preferred drawing style with fully flexible options, easily accessed at any time. And with two distinct workspaces, you can quickly and accurately design floor plans in the 2D construction mode and check the results instantly in the 3D model in design mode.

Arcon Evo now includes a built-in plan mode assistant that functions in similar way to one of their other 2D drawing products, Creativelines. In this mode, all elevations, section views and floor plans can be laid out together on a single sheet, linked to main working drawing. Using the Plan Assistant you can save plan layouts as templates for future projects. All views are linked to any new drawing, allowing you to create plan layouts a lot quicker and easier than before.

The software has a large selection of new style construction elements including window and door types, and the extensive window customisation tools allow for endless variations to be produced. You can select a window from the existing library and change any aspect to ensure it suits your design requirements, and then save selections, preferences and new designs to the window library for future projects.

A lot of thought has been put into the construction element dialogue boxes, which utilise fully interactive graphics for modifying individual construction elements, making it very easy to modify individual elements and also allowing user to make changes to individual component parts. All updates are applied immediately to the drawing.

There are also advanced editors for, as an example, creating complex multi-roof structures using blending tool and wall constructions, including a detailed layering feature for adding hatching to walls and around windows/doors etc. Different display views for timber construction in walls, floors, roof structure are also available.

The software's new in-line measurement tool provides a fast, easy and visual method to make changes to the elements of your design. Usable in both 2D construction mode and 3D design mode, in-line measurements can be used to change the sizes and positions of doors, windows, walls, roofs etc. You can lock parts of the element that you don't want to be affected or show the effects of drag-and-drop repositioning.

The improved real-time rendering capabilities are another key feature, allowing users to create high-quality 3D visuals with advanced shading, bump/reflection mapping, 3D textures and lighting conditions. Projects can be used to quickly create full visualisations which can be shared with clients via common file formats or as 3D models using Elecosoft's o2c format.

Arcon Evo supports a number of file formats for importing and exporting project data including 3DS, STL (3D printing), Google Earth, COLLADA, and DXF/DWG Interface. It also includes a SketchUp 3D Warehouse interface for adding furnishing and other component items directly to your design. Arcon Evo also supports IFC BIM -however a BIM specific version will be made available later on in this year with additional BIM features including access to the Elecosoft BIMCloud.
www.arcon-evo.co.uk