CADchat, a digital workspace that combines video meetings, design reviews and centralised communication for teams and external stakeholders, has announced its latest update.
With its focus to date being on 3D product design and engineering, the latest release includes new 2D CAD features for native DXF support, with CADchat able to handle 2D CAD drawings, offering an efficient collaboration experience between designers and manufacturers wherever they are in the world.
By using native CAD data, CADchat bypasses the inefficiencies of PDFs by offering instant DXF rendering, dramatically speeding up the process of opening and interacting with complex drawings.
Enhanced tools allow team members to see each other’s cursors and viewpoints in real time, while mark-up tools like pens, highlighters, sticky notes, and shapes offer clear communication and precise markups during collaborative sessions.
Users can navigate through various layers of their DXF files, tailoring the visibility of each component to suit the task at hand.
Pinning comments to specific parts of a drawing initiates conversational threads right within the workspace, enhancing clarity and context.
“We’re already receiving an excellent response from our beta users,” said CADchat CEO Graham Bredemeyer. “From architects reviewing detailed floor plans to engineers revising complex machinery layouts, our platform supports a broad range of use cases, making it the tool of choice for industry leaders.”
The new 2D CAD features are integrated into CADchat’s existing framework, which means they are accessible within the same digital workspace used for 3D CAD and other project-related activities. This unified approach ensures that teams can switch between different types of content without losing the context of their work, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing time spent on project coordination.
CADchat adds that it plans future support for additional file formats like DWG and the ability to convert PDF files into high-fidelity 2D CAD files directly within the CADchat platform.
“Even if all a user has is a PDF, we’re developing the capability to transform it on our servers into a renderable 2D CAD format, providing the same seamless experience as with native DXF or DWG files,” said Bredemeyer.
