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|Scene 1: <small>Early 3D CasCADos Drawing</small>
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|Scene 2: <small>3D CasCADos Drawing</small>
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CasCADos is a new architectural BIM software program developed by First InVision of Austria to design interior of buildings (i.e., lighting, furniture, seating visualization) and entire building plans (including concept drawings, site plans, elevations, and landscape) using real-time 3D object based parametric rendering while working in a manner like sketch paper in a 2D drawing environment.

History:

For over a decade, after working in the CAD industry, Christian Dorthwirth came addressed challenges with existing architectural CAD software programs. This mainly included their difficulty of use and slow speed for three dimensional drawing. To solve these challenges, Christian Dorfwirth founded First InVision and introduced CasCADos after two years of development beginning in the year 2005.

CasCADos was developed with the goal of creating a product with a minimal learning curve. This included an extremely fast high end graphic parametric rendering, and the ability to design buildings very quickly. This resulted in being able to draw structures from simple to as complex as necessary. CasCADos is being introduced at the beginning of 2008 by CasCADosUS in the United States/North America and in Italy.

Capabilities:

CasCAdos differentiates itself from conventional CAD software in that the user interface is:

;# not dependent on learning keystrokes,
;# stores all the construction components and objects as elements to manipulate rather than building with lines,
;# drawing 2D construction elements and objects without (for a large file - limited) 3D rendering delays,
;# and a wall, floor, or story can be stretched or moved in 3D and all the other building elements will be realigned (walls, floors, story levels) at once when the draftsmen needs to modify the plans.

Learning CasCADos is dependent upon learning the properties of the construction elements, being able to draw lines to place construction elements/objects, and to extrude objects. The user primarily draws in 2D.

CasCADos can render objects at 10 Million polygons/second. The 3D rendering can be seen (in real time) in any 360-degree angle based on the position of view. The user can also place materials/objects in 3D as well as 2D. Electricians, plumbers, and masons can modify plans by defining their own building layers and using the standard engineering symbols to display their routing. In this way, the building design can be shared among multiple users.

The CasCADos program can be read and written as DWG and DXF formats, making the program compatible with most other CAD programs including AutoCAD files.

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| Developer First InVision / Europe
| OS Microsoft Windows
| Genre Building Information Modeling
| License Proprietary
| In U.S. - CasCADosUS
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See also

First InVision | The parent developer and European presence

3D arc | blog and pictures of CasCADos (in German)

Prenner & Parner Softwarevertriebs OEG | additional information about CasCADos (also in German)

External links

U.S. Building Census | Information about new construction