Looking for some 8-bit CAD programs

[Gunstar]

I used to own&use a fantastic CAD program on my XE called Super 3D plotter II and had or used 64K&128k versions. It used 3 different resolutions GR.8(320x192, 2), Antic mode E (160x192, 4), GR.7 (160x92) and could produce some very fast and/or detailed polygon models depending on the resolution. it was very good and very impressive for an 8-bit. I can't fine it anywhere and was hoping some one can help me locate a copy.

 

Also, I'm looking for another CAD program called Chroma CAD 3D that was released only for the 130XE and only through Antic Publishing's catalog in the early 90's. Much more advance CAD modeling, it used different techniques with polygons including light-sourcing, shading, multiple color in high-res, a premier CAD program that most would have thought impossible for an 8-bit Atari, though it does takes hours to render models, and as such, for obvious reasons, has no animation capabilities like Super 3D Plotter II.

 

Lastly, I'm wondering if any other CAD programs were ever released for the 8-bit's, especially some that might use GTIA resolutions for advanced color, shading and texture mapping like is seen in many European 3D demos.

Edited July 27, 2006 by Gunstar

[puppetmark]

I used to own&use a fantastic CAD program on my XE called Super 3D plotter II and had or used 64K&128k versions. It used 3 different resolutions GR.8(320x192, 2), Antic mode E (160x192, 4), GR.7 (160x92) and could produce some very fast and/or detailed polygon models depending on the resolution. it was very good and very impressive for an 8-bit. I can't fine it anywhere and was hoping some one can help me locate a copy.

 

Also, I'm looking for another CAD program called Chroma CAD 3D that was released only for the 130XE and only through Antic Publishing's catalog in the early 90's. Much more advance CAD modeling, it used different techniques with polygons including light-sourcing, shading, multiple color in high-res, a premier CAD program that most would have thought impossible for an 8-bit Atari, though it does takes hours to render models, and as such, for obvious reasons, has no animation capabilities like Super 3D Plotter II.

 

Lastly, I'm wondering if any other CAD programs were ever released for the 8-bit's, especially some that might use GTIA resolutions for advanced color, shading and texture mapping like is seen in many European 3D demos.

 

 

I think this is what you are looking for.

Super_3D_Plotter_II.zip

Super_3d_Plotter_II_other.zip

Edited July 31, 2006 by puppetmark

[Gunstar]

Thank you very much. Hopefully I'll be able to find Chroma CAD and others someday too.

[Heaven/TQA]

quite impressive...esp. when running in atari800 in fullspeed emulation...

[Gury]

Some more CAD / 3D programs to check out:

 

Circuit Database II

http://gury.atari8.info/details_software/513.htm

 

3-D CAD

http://gury.atari8.info/details_software/1205.htm

 

View 3-D, programmed in ACTION! language

http://gury.atari8.info/details_source_code/246.htm

 

Some of them are simple, but fun and surely useful.

[Gunstar]

Some more CAD / 3D programs to check out:

 

Circuit Database II

http://gury.atari8.info/details_software/513.htm

 

3-D CAD

http://gury.atari8.info/details_software/1205.htm

 

View 3-D, programmed in ACTION! language

http://gury.atari8.info/details_source_code/246.htm

 

Some of them are simple, but fun and surely useful.

 

Thanks! I'll check these out tonight. This is cool! I'm still looking for the holy grail though: ChromaCAD 3D, only, ever (AFAIK), released through Antic Magazine's "The Catalog" mail order house in the later years (somewhere between '89-'91). Antic also did a review/interview write-up in one of the editions.

Edited October 26, 2006 by Gunstar

[Atari8bitCarts]

I used to own&use a fantastic CAD program on my XE called Super 3D plotter II and had or used 64K&128k versions. It used 3 different resolutions GR.8(320x192, 2), Antic mode E (160x192, 4), GR.7 (160x92) and could produce some very fast and/or detailed polygon models depending on the resolution. it was very good and very impressive for an 8-bit. I can't fine it anywhere and was hoping some one can help me locate a copy.

 

Also, I'm looking for another CAD program called Chroma CAD 3D that was released only for the 130XE and only through Antic Publishing's catalog in the early 90's. Much more advance CAD modeling, it used different techniques with polygons including light-sourcing, shading, multiple color in high-res, a premier CAD program that most would have thought impossible for an 8-bit Atari, though it does takes hours to render models, and as such, for obvious reasons, has no animation capabilities like Super 3D Plotter II.

 

Lastly, I'm wondering if any other CAD programs were ever released for the 8-bit's, especially some that might use GTIA resolutions for advanced color, shading and texture mapping like is seen in many European 3D demos.

 

I couldn't find it on Atarimania? But I do have the complete copy of Super 3D Plotter II by Elfin Magic. I love the elf artwork and inside they show a Star Wars tie fighter in wireframe.

[+Stephen]

Pretty sure I had a CAD program released by Vulcan Software. Pretty sure I posted all the Vulcan discs I have.

[russg]

Some more CAD / 3D programs to check out:

 

Circuit Database II

http://gury.atari8.i...oftware/513.htm

 

3-D CAD

http://gury.atari8.i...ftware/1205.htm

 

View 3-D, programmed in ACTION! language

http://gury.atari8.i...ce_code/246.htm

 

Some of them are simple, but fun and surely useful.

 

Thanks! I'll check these out tonight. This is cool! I'm still looking for the holy grail though: ChromaCAD 3D, only, ever (AFAIK), released through Antic Magazine's "The Catalog" mail order house in the later years (somewhere between '89-'91). Antic also did a review/interview write-up in one of the editions.

Here's CAD 3D (no chroma) from Antic catalog SPACE. It has documentation on the .ATR. (Comes from Holme's archive).... I found a review of chromaCAD 3D, so I guess it exists. It came with four single

density disks and 3D glasses.

This will be messy, but I'm gonna copy and paste the review here. I can't read it, make any sense of it, actually.

 

›Reprinted from Current Notes, Vol. 11, No. 10, December 1991››ChromaCAD ---------››Exploring the Third Dimension››Review by Rick Reaser›› Taking the ChromaCAD Challenge›› There was quite a stir at our September Users Group 8-bit SIG. Everyone was talking about this impressive advertisement in _Atari Interface Magazine_ and _Current Notes_ for a new 3-D modeling program for the 8-bit, called _ChromaCAD_. Surely no one could do something that exotic for our machines! I got a call from The Alchemist (CN's Ben Poehland) asking me to review it. That meant the program didn't just exist in an ad, but on a floppy as well!›› I soon received a thick envelope with four diskettes, two manuals (over 200 pages worth), and a pair of 3-D glasses. It would be quite a feat to sort through all this material in the short six weeks I had to complete the review for _Current Notes_. I used the programs with several different computer setups, created several different 3-D models, and tried most of the features (but not necessarily in every combination). So, let's see what _ChromaCAD_ is all about.››What is ChromaCAD?›› _ChromaCAD_ is a 3-D modeling system that actually consists of two (soon to be three) separate program modules. The physical analogy to _ChromaCAD_ would be taking a piece of clay, forming it into any shape you want, then painting it--using your computer. _ChromaCAD's_ "Model Builder 91" program module lets you "shape the clay." The _ChromaCAD "Surface Shader XE 91" module lets you "paint" your model and view it under different lighting conditions. The soon to be available "Printer Driver/Utility Disk" module will allow you to print a flat picture of your creation to paper or to the screen from any selected angle under any selected lighting. In a nutshell, rather than merely drawing, then coloring, your pictures on a flat, 2-D surface, _ChromaCAD_ gives you the ability to add true depth to your artwork.›› The penalty for working in 3-D, however, is that you now need to worry about that third dimension. Normally, when you draw a picture on your computer or piece of paper, you only worry about how wide and how tall to make things. It's possible to make a 2-D picture look 3-D by using "perspective" and "vanishing points" like you learned in art class. But, in reality, you still only worry about how wide or tall to make the lines using special rules. That "wideness" direction is designated the "X-axis" while "tallness" lies along the "Y-axis." With _ChromaCAD_, you also have to deal with "depth" or the "Z-axis" which runs perpendicular to the X and Y axes towards you straight off the paper or computer screen. Fortunately, _ChromaCAD_ has some ways to help with this third dimension, but you'll still need to understand 3-D coordinate systems to some degree in order to use the programs. And, to use _ChromaCAD_ to its full capacity, you'll need a basic understanding of how to plot points on graph paper.›› I'm personally familiar with one other program for the 8-bit that works in 3-D. It's called _Atari World_, a 1981 translation by C. Kingston of an Apple II program called, believe it or not, _Apple World_, written by P. Lutus. _Atari World_ is essentially a 3-D "turtle graphics" program. It allows you to draw 3-D, straight line, multi- color, wire frame models. The program allows you to rotate, zoom in, or shift the wire frame model from side to side or up and down. You can also write little programs to do this rotation, zooming and shifting so, in effect, you can "tour" your creations.›› There are several BASIC type-in PD programs similar to _Atari World_. Two that come to mind are _Solid States_ from the October 1981 _ANALOG_ and _Easy 3-D Wireframes_ from the July 1988 _ANTIC_. Both these programs run hot and fast under TurboBASIC. _Solid States_ is file number 1672 in the GEnie 8-bit Library. File 3550 in the GEnie 8- bit Library, DRAW3D.COM is probably a wireframe modeler as well. There's also an Action! program called _View 3-D_ from the June '85 _ANTIC_. The only drawback to all these programs is that your models are just wire frames; you can see right through them. Fine for making bird cages, but if you wanted the picture of your house to have stucco and siding, you were out of luck, until _ChromaCAD_ came along.›› _ChromaCAD_ handles the third dimension using a different concept from _Atari World_ or other Computer Aided Design (CAD) programs you may have seen or read about on "larger" computers (like the Atari ST or mainframes). Most 3-D solid modeling CAD programs take standard solid figures like cubes, cylinders and spheres and allow you to stick them together in various ways. Others will take wireframes ala _Atari World_ and color the faces. Both these methods have several limitations.››_ChromaCAD's_ method is very clever and entirely different.››How Does It Work?›› The _ChromaCAD_ "Model Builder 91" module builds 3-D models in "shell slices." Let's say you wanted to create a 3-D model of a paper towel tube: a hollow cylinder. Stand the tube on end. First you would plot a circle of points to represent the bottom edge of the tube. Next you would create another circle of points to represent a middle cut or cross section of the tube. Connect the points of the midsection circle to those on the bottom circle such that you create a bunch of triangular panels. As you create these triangular panels, you assign a color number to each. Next, create another circle of points to represent the top edge of the tube and connect these points to the middle section to make triangular panels as before, assigning color numbers as you go. These slices can be stacked over and over and the shape of the cross section can change along the way. In fact. a cross section can be a single point, so that you can close off the shapes. So, in reality, the shapes you create aren't really solid, but hollow.››****POSSIBLE DATA LOSS 00 55****›› While plotting points on the graph screen with "Model Builder," there are special keystrokes that must be remembered to access certain functions and menus. There are also special keystrokes that must be remembered at the main _ChromaCAD_ menu as well for both program modules. The manual has a separate page listing special keystrokes that can be used as a "Cheat-Sheet." When plotting points on the graph, it's also possible to use the joystick to move the cursor around, which was quite handy.›› In addition to the models in the tutorials, I finished six original creations of my own design using the "Model Builder" modules. I created two cubes, a straight tube, an enclosed cylinder, a sphere and a pumpkin. Once I got the hang of it, the menus and memorized keystrokes were fairly natural. I quickly learned how extremely important it is to plan your model ahead of time. Once you save a contour line or slice to disk, your only option is to erase the whole line if you make a mistake. If you discover you made an error two lines back, guess what? You have to erase everything back to that point! Arrgghhh! Before you turn on the computer, have a good plan of attack and at least a few of the slices graphed out on paper. Enclosing the ends of models of figuring out how to have "dents" on the ends of models requires some advanced planning and use of special features provided by the program. One of these is a right hand rule, since the triangular panels are only visible from one direction.›› "Model Builder" provides several excellent tools to help create contour lines. In addition to being able to plot points via the joystick, points can also be entered by coordinate number. The "drawing universe" is 65536 x 65536 x 65536 of points. There's even a tool to graft arcs and lines together. Mastering these tools is fairly easy and a must for speed in model building.›› Connecting the points between contour lines to make the triangles is also made easy with several tools. Since it's a "done deal," once you store a contour line to disk, the program provides several ways to check your work. You can trace through the triangles to ensure they're properly constructed, or you can view the completed contour.›› With "Model Builder," you can only view the models in contour line form. You can pick any viewing angle and even have the program display more than one model at once on the screen. To see what the sculptured surface looks like, you load the model into the "Surface Shader" module.›› "Surface Shader" uses some of the same menus as "Model Builder," and the user interface is essentially the same making the learning curve a little less steep. The model orientation controls and 3-D coordinate system are also the same. The first thing I noticed was that models are loaded by number rather than file name. This appears to be an artifact of Forth DOS which handles things with block numbers.›› There are an incredible number of options to invoke within "Surface Shader." You can orient the model any way you want and set up spot lights from any direction or elevation as well. These aren't just ordinary spotlights. The color of each light can be specified, and ambient light is also available. One of the special features that worked quite well for me was the highlighting option. This option over-emphasizes the direct glare of light off the model as if it were a shiny surface. It looked quite realistic to me.›› "Surface Shader" offers four different display modes. one of which provides a 3-D view with the accompanying special glasses. It took some adjustment of the knobs on my TV, but I got 3-D to work and was quite impressed. It's important to note that the amount of time to load a model into the computer depends on what mode you use and how many screens are generated. The more screens (read, resolution), the more loading time to generate an image on your monitor. It took about _45 minutes_ to generate the "head" model shown in the _ChromaCAD_ advertisement.›› Soon to be available is the "Printer Driver/Utility Diskette." I didn't have a copy of it to review, but I did see some output from it. It allows you to print the screen views of your creations. By using multiple passes with a used ribbon, incredible contrast (grey scale) is possible. Color printing is also supported. As previously explained, the utility disk also allows screen views to be saved in AtariDOS format for viewing by others.››Who Is ChromaCAD for?›› _ChromaCAD_ is targeted at graphic artists, according to the literature. The author intends to port it over to other machines as well. This shouldn't be too difficult since it's written in a high-order language, namely Forth. I wouldn't recommend this program to someone who isn't serious about 3-D modeling. This program is for high schoolers and above. It takes a fair amount of dedication and desire to master it. The results, however, are spectacular, especially for an 8- bit.››Quirks, Bugs, and the Wish List›› I found the menu system to be different from what I expected. It would seem logical to me that "in" would be to the right and "out" to the left. It's not hard to get used to, but it wasn't natural to me. I missed hearing a noise when I plotted a point. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I had hit the period key hard enough to plot the point. It was heartbreaking to have to erase a whole line when I made a mistake.›› I was unable to crash to program, except when I tried to get it to initialize a double density diskette and while changing model disks. There should probably be more prompting when changing model disks while in the program. Error trapping appears to be quite thoroughly tested.››Everything worked as advertised.›› It would be nice to be able to change the position of a single point on a contour after the model is done to "adjust" things. It would be nice to be able to change the color number assigned to a triangular panel after saving as well. The lack of AtariDOS compatibility is workable, but not convenient. Once you start a new model on a diskette, it would be nice to be able to add contour lines to a previous model. You have to work on a model to completion before you start another model on the same diskette. It would be nice to be able to give the models names rather than just numbers. If screen images could be stored in standard Atari picture files, they could be ported into other graphics programs, such as _MicroPainter_.›› The popular _ANTIC_ graphics program "Rambrandt" is also written in Forth and has many similarities to _ChromaCAD_, especially its DOS. It might not be that tough to load _ChromaCAD_ screens into _Rambrandt_ for 2-D editing.››The long load time for "Surface Shader" is unavoidable, but a nuisance.››

CAD3D.zip

Edited July 15, 2012 by russg

[+bob1200xl]

Is anyone still looking for ChromaCAD? I think I have it, somewhere...

 

Bob

 

 

 

Some more CAD / 3D programs to check out:

 

Circuit Database II

http://gury.atari8.i...oftware/513.htm

 

3-D CAD

http://gury.atari8.i...ftware/1205.htm

 

View 3-D, programmed in ACTION! language

http://gury.atari8.i...ce_code/246.htm

 

Some of them are simple, but fun and surely useful.

 

Thanks! I'll check these out tonight. This is cool! I'm still looking for the holy grail though: ChromaCAD 3D, only, ever (AFAIK), released through Antic Magazine's "The Catalog" mail order house in the later years (somewhere between '89-'91). Antic also did a review/interview write-up in one of the editions.

[fibrewire]

Necrobump - I'm interested in ChromaCAD

[Gunstar]

Is anyone still looking for ChromaCAD? I think I have it, somewhere...

 

Bob

Yes! Sorry I missed your reply 4 years ago. I was just searching for the program(s) and info on-line again. I found some more info about ChromaCAD 3D hear too: http://www.strotmann.de/~cas/Infothek/ChromaCAD91/ChromaCAD-advertising.pdf

[Mclaneinc]

Searched my system, these are what came up for Chroma CAD, I don't know if these are official, add-ons or the actual thing..

 

Posted purely on the hope it means something as I never used said program..

Chroma Cad parts.rar

[Stargate1025]

I just receive a large atari collection.

I have chroma cad . Email me at culpepperjj@yahoo.com I will send you picks of the disc. I believe I also have all the books for it as well.

[Stargate1025]

[Stargate1025]

Looks like I have everything that comes with chroma cad

[_The Doctor__]

20160714_082730.jpg20160714_082813.jpg

yep thats the ones we used chroma cad and chroma shader.... perfect.... takes a long time but is gorgeous! damn fine in fact... there were a couple revisions.. spread the wealth! scans and disks or it didn't happen

Edited October 26, 2016 by _The Doctor__

[Gunstar]

Finally! After years of searching and acquiring, here are all the ATR's and PDF's of both needed manuals for the most advanced CAD system ever developed for an 8-bit computer (and more advanced, in many ways [not including real-time animation], than most -if not all- 16-bit CAD's too) in one zip file!

Chroma CAD 3D.zip

Edited September 25, 2019 by Gunstar

[_The Doctor__]

1 hour ago, Gunstar said:

Finally! After years of searching and acquiring, here are all the ATR's and PDF's of both needed manuals for the most advanced CAD system ever developed for an 8-bit computer (and more advanced, in many ways [not including real-time animation], than most -if not all- 16-bit CAD's too) in one zip file!

Chroma CAD 3D.zip 36.92 MB · 0 downloads

preservation project if the sources are original disks :O

[Gunstar]

They are ATR's I downloaded from this thread, not ATX's, if that is what you mean...

@Mclaneinc , posted the images in this thread years ago.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Gunstar

[_The Doctor__]

Very happy with what's turned up here...

This is almost all of it... there were revisions and additions...

[Mclaneinc]

10 hours ago, Gunstar said:

Finally! After years of searching and acquiring, here are all the ATR's and PDF's of both needed manuals for the most advanced CAD system ever developed for an 8-bit computer (and more advanced, in many ways [not including real-time animation], than most -if not all- 16-bit CAD's too) in one zip file!

Chroma CAD 3D.zip 36.92 MB · 9 downloads

 

Glad to help Mat, I always scan through my stuff just incase I might have the odd unique thing..

[Fierodoug5]

Anybody have a manual for Super 3D Plotter II?

 

[+Allan]

https://archive.org/details/super3dplotter2elfinmagic

[+Philsan]

Do you have informations about this program called C.A.D.?