Would ArchiCAD be vulnerable to the Quickdim patent?

stefan — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 11:10:36 GMT

Read today on http://www.upfrontezine.com/2013/upf-797.htm

Ralph wrote:
Autodesk in March 1999 released AutoCAD 2000, which added the QDim command. Three years earlier, however, a now-defunct CAD company named Adra Systems filed and received patent 5,655,095 for the same dimensioning operation. Here is how Adra described QuickDim:
Adra wrote:
QuickDim speeds the dimensioning process by automatically deciding whether to insert horizontal, vertical, angular, radial, diameter or parallel dimensions, based on the geometry being dimensioned and the position of the cursor relative to the geometry.

I'm not sure of the automatic alignment of the dimensions with regard to the cursor position as is available inside ArchiCAD might be in conflict with this patent, but to me it shows that such legal battles hamper innovation in a very negative way.

Re: Would ArchiCAD be vulnerable to the Quickdim patent?

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 23:02:44 GMT

I also read this article and I was thinking about it a little bit.
The site of the company shows how the automatic dimension alignment works in their program. What I think it does is it takes the bounding box of the dimensioned element (let's say a slanted line) and if the cursor is within the box, the dimension will be aligned to the element. If it is above it or below it, it will be a horizontal dimension, and if it is to its left or right side, it will be a vertical dimension.
I think ArchiCAD does this differently because it displays the circle divided into 6 segments and the segment you click into defines how the dimension will be placed.
But this is based on a short video. the patent may be different or more elaborate.

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Would ArchiCAD be vulnerable to the Quickdim patent?

Re: Would ArchiCAD be vulnerable to the Quickdim patent?