App: HighDesign SE
Developer: ILEXSOFT
Genres: Graphics & Design, Productivity

Advanced design and drafting app for professionals and creatives. Optimized for both Intel- & Apple Silicon-powered Macs.

HighDesign SE (Standard Edition) is the full-featured and easy to use CAD application to create professional designs, drafts and blueprints.

HighDesign combines advanced drafting and design tools with a modern, efficiency-oriented user interface designed to assist the user in all the phases of the creative process. From the casual user that needs to produce technical drawings to the design professional, HighDesign provides an extensive range of powerful drawing and editing functions, from the essential drafting methods to more advanced, parametric tools like dimensions, vector hatches and patterns, smart annotations, symbols with multiple views and more.

HighDesign supports both US and metric unit systems, as well as angular and area units, and provides architectural and engineering drawing scales.

The User Interface is designed to be responsive and fit different screen sizes and configurations, maximising the use of space and focusing on the project. Support for multiple displays, the sidebar and input bar, the properties Inspector, dark and light themes, and many customization options allow the software to adjust to the user's context and preferences.

The Radial Menu brings together all the relevant tools and functions in one, convenient visual menu.

Design Features:
• Easy project management with groups, unlimited layers and resources like symbols, line types, hatches and vector patterns that can be easily extended and customised.
• Advanced selection and search functions.
• Bindings between tools and layers, layers and colours, and colours and pen weights for one-click project organisation.
• Snap to grid, objects, intersections, right angle, tangent and smart alignments that automatically recognise perpendicular and parallel directions and intersections between two alignments.
• Color fills and gradients with varying colours and transparency for all closed shapes.
• Rich library of symbols, line types, hatches and patterns.

Printing, Publishing, Import and Export:
• Advanced Print functions: layout, multiple pages, margin marks, optional monochrome output, scaling, and the ability to print the entire drawing, the selected objects or a defined print area.
• HighDesign imports and exports AutoCAD® DXF, DXB and DWG® files from version R12 to 2020.
• Ability to open, embed and export images as JPEG, PNG with alpha channel, GIF and TIFF.

Drawing Tools:
• Construction objects.
• Lines from start-point and midpoint, multiple lines, double lines.
• Polyline tool with line segments and arcs by three points or by center, and automatic tangent alignments.
• Rectangles and parametric Regular Polygons tool.
• Parametric vector Hatches and Patterns with the ability to open islands inside the hatched region and Gradient Fills.
• Circles and Arcs by center, diameter, three points, tangent, Ellipses and Arcs of Ellipses.
• Curves: Freehand with automatic smoothing; Bezier Path with mirrored, asymmetric or disconnected control points; Spline; Revision Cloud.
• Texts tool with support for multiple styles and writing directions.
• Smart Annotations that automatically extract the information from parametric objects.
• Linear, multiple, radial, angular, ordinate and elevation dimensions.
• Parametric Symbols with multiple views and the ability to extend the custom libraries.
• Panning and Zoom tool with support for gestures.
• Print Areas to select rectangular portions of the drawing for the print function.
• Measure tool.

Editing Functions:
• Transformations: Move, Duplicate, Linear and Polar Multiply, Rotate and Rotate by Angle, Mirror and Mirror a Copy, Stretch, Scale.
• Linear Editing: Mark Intersection, Join, Extend, Split, Trim, Divide in Parts, Break.
• Modifications: Fillet and Chamfer, Offset, Extrude, Explode, Convert Into Polyline, Apply Hatch, Calculate Area and Center of Mass, Fit Texts.

Release notes:
• New Home window to view, manage and open documents.
• Project files now include thumbnail.
• Boolean operations for polygons.
• New Export as Image window.
• Improved DXF/DWG compatibility.
• Improved drafting.
• Miscellaneous quality and performance improvements.