Technical drawing packages tend to come in two flavors. The first is the stand-alone, dedicated and expensive variant, and the second flavor is the integrated (often stripped-down) illustration package, which comes bundled with a main CAD platform.
So, it’s refreshing to see a technical illustration package that breaks that dichotomy by being both affordable and functional. And that is exactly what we have in Canvas X 2018 from Canvas GFX, Inc. Canvas X 2018 in short, is a vector drawing and raster editing illustration package aimed at a technical audience.
The Canvas range of products includes Canvas X, Canvas X GIS and Canvas Draw for Mac. For this review, we will be taking a look at the latest release of Canvas X 2018, the main technical illustration package of the trio, which allows for vector and raster drawing and editing. The other two Canvas variants are self-explanatory: one is focused on GIS applications, and the other is a drawing package, for Mac.
First Impressions
The software installs quickly and easily with a couple of mouse clicks. The first screen alerts the user to the fact that this isn’t just an illustration package by asking if the user would like to create a new illustration, presentation or animation document. I selected “New Illustration” document.
The illustration interface is seen in the image below. It doesn’t take much to figure out, with the drawing tools on the left, and the menu bars containing coordinate information, drawing scale options, and other document/page settings. A range of default page settings are available for standard page sizes through to ANSI standard page sizes.
As mentioned previously, the standard drawing tools are located on the left, and those wishing to get drawing with ellipses and curves the old-fashioned way can do so here with ease and familiarity.
File Types
The good news for users of other vector illustration packages is that the list of importable file types includes Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw types. Similarly, files can be saved in various graphics formats such as SVG, JPG, GIF, AVI, DWG, DXF (and a lot more), so the wide choice of compatible file types can save a lot of hassle when it comes to importing and exporting drawings.
2D Drawing
Like most other illustration packages, Canvas X 2018 is also built upon layers, so users can flip between an annotation layer and a color layer with ease.
In addition to the standard 2D drawing tools you’d expect to see in a technical illustration program, Canvas X has a feature referred to as “Dynamic Effects”. This feature allows the addition of effects to objects, which resize dynamically with the parent object. Effects such as shadow, blur, and reflection can be added to an object, and can easily be transferred to other objects with the Attributes Dropper tool. Effect settings can be saved into presets, to allow quick recall when working.
Also, this latest release of Canvas X contains a feature called Smart Snaps, a visual guide used for eyeballing dimensions and shapes. When resizing a shape, a Smart Snaps bar will appear (see the image below), allowing quick shape sizing without the need for reading coordinates or entering dimensions manually. And it does indeed work pretty well.
3D View
This is 2018, and the world is moving towards model based definition (MBD) and so any software company wishing to remain alive should at least offer the ability to import actual 3D files. And Canvas X 2018 does allow that, although only from AutoCAD DWG and DXF files. The good news though is that most (if not all) CAD packages allow some form of DWG/DXF file, so converting your own files to be used in Canvas X is easy.
A large portion of a technical illustrator’s time can be wasted on the tedious task of aligning imported 3D models to the correct views (such as isometric). This is not such a big headache in Canvas X. As soon as you import the DWG file, you can just click on the object on the page and the 3D View Editor window will pop up, to allow you to align the 3D model to your page requirements. In addition to view angles, users can change lighting and color here.
This process can be repeated over and over to achieve different views on the same page, as seen in the image below. Generally, the layout tools in Canvas X are simple and intuitive with a selection of rulers, grids and snap lines all there to keep your illustration nice and attractive.
The technical illustration portion of Canvas X 2018 is a competent software tool that should be easy for any experienced illustrator to pick up with ease. To an inexperienced illustrator, there may be a bit of a learning curve, but only in the same way that there would be a curve with any other dedicated technical illustration package.
Good for Industry
Canvas X follows CGM*ATA 2200 software specifications for technical illustration, which means that it is especially useful in aerospace. In fact, according to the Canvas GFX, Inc. website, “Canvas X is the integrated solution designed especially for the aerospace manufacturing sector.” In addition to being aerospace-grade, Canvas X contains 5000+ industry segmented glyphs in its symbol library, which is great if you need industry-specific symbols for a given project.
Aside from aerospace, Canvas X has many users in the energy sector, and also the seismological community, hence there is a dedicated product Canvas X GIS for users working with GIS.
The first technical illustration package I ever used professionally was Auto-Trol’s Tech Illustrator, followed by IsoDraw. Of those two packages, I would say that Canvas X 2018 is more similar to the Auto-Trol offering, in terms of function and depth. Fans of Auto-Trol may find that Canvas X fits their needs quite nicely. And, of course, Canvas X is significantly cheaper than Tech Illustrator.
The full, one-time price is an affordable USD $599. If you’d rather have an annual subscription, you can pay USD $239 per year. The cost of Canvas X combined with the fairly deep functionality makes this a great value alternative to the offerings from other companies. This makes it not only attractive to big companies such as those in aerospace, but potentially to smaller entities who may enjoy the convenience of a small one-time payment.
Final Verdict
Illustrators who prefer a familiar way of doing things, or who require very high-quality drawings accurate to a sub-micron level in a professional setting will benefit from Canvas, as will engineers who illustrate to ATA standards. These users may be using fully integrated CAD/PLM solutions that combine the entire modelling and illustration workflow into a single process.
Users doing fun things, creating pretty pictures for a thesis, technical illustrations for a magazine or some other non-critical production project tasks may do well to find something less robust with less of a learning curve.
Would I buy this software for myself? If I was working on an industry project, and I needed to take my work home with me, I would use this software as a cost-effective and capable equivalent to other packages.
Canvas GFX, Inc. has sponsored this post. They have no editorial input to this post. Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are mine. —Phillip Keane