What is HighDesign?

HighDesign is a computer-aided design (CAD) solution for Mac OS X with a modern, intuitive interface to help you transform your visions into detailed projects. Used in architecture, engineering, interior design, landscaping, mechanical drafting, and construction, HighDesign provides sophisticated tools for general 2D drafting, architectural design, illustration, and project organization.

HighDesign is available in two editions, Standard and Professional, to best suit the needs of persons and firms in different disciplinary fields. Learn more...

Powerful CAD Tools

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe" -Abraham Lincoln.

With its wide range of drawing and editing tools, HighDesign provides you a solution to achieve your goals as a designer, in architecture, engineering, interior design, mechanical drafting, landscaping, and more!

The toolbars provide all the familiar drawing methods and objects you expect in a CAD software, from lines, arcs, and polylines to vector hatches and patterns; dimensions, styled texts and annotations; reusable symbols, parametric walls, columns, windows, and more.

The Freedom of Drawing

When you begin a drawing in HighDesign, all the important functions are at your fingertips: coordinates, length and angle constraints can be set with a click or key shortcut; lengths can be entered directly; midpoint, endpoints, objects, intersections and right angles are recognized by the snap function; automatic vertical, horizontal, parallel and perpendicular alignments dramatically cut the time required to complex geometries.

You decide the scale of the drawing and the level of detail of the drawing. Units include metric, imperial, and pixels/points.

Efficient Workflow

HighDesign offers advanced tools to keep your project well organized. Groups, Layers, Sheets, various selection methods and the Find tool help you keep everything in its place, easy to find and easy to modify. Automatically link drawing tools to specific layers to keep everything organized with no effort. No matter the size of your project, be it the doghouse for Fido or the next Museum of Modern Art, a good organization will improve your productivity and cut the project time dramatically.

Advanced Interface

Designed from the start to be responsive and clean, the user interface improves your productivity by focusing on the project rather than on procedures and methods. Not just the icons and buttons, but the whole approach to functions, sequences of clicks, size and position of toolbars have been designed to make the user experience in HighDesign as streamlined as possible. As a result of this, HighDesign will help you get familiar with the user interface in a very short time, and work on your project instead of working to learn how to use a tool.

HighDesign 2015 supports Retina displays.

Radial Menu

The radial menu provides all the relevant actions right where you need them: right click to open a visual menu organized in sections to quickly access the function you want. Functions include Edit, with the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands, Undo, Arrange; View and zoom commands; Modify and Edit Tools; advanced tools; Organize to quickly access groups, layers and sheets.

High Quality Output

HighDesign's output capabilities include high quality printing and exporting to digital image formats. The Print window provides you with many options to fine-tune the final results: you can choose to print the whole project with the currently visible layers and sheets, print the selected items only, or print the selected print area. The drawing can be resized to fit one page, and printed as hairlines or with the actual pens, in colors or monochromatic.

In addition, HighDesign Professional provides the Create Image tool to make high-impact image for use in your favorite presentation tool or the web.

Compatible

HighDesign 2015 support DXF/DWG® 2015 import and export for extensive compatibility with other CAD and BIM software.

The Export to PDF function provides advanced options to create single- or multi-page PDF documents.

Image formats include JPEG, PNG, and high-resolution TIFF.