Stardraw managing director David Snipp explains: "Our conventional applications have established the sorts of tools that integrators find easy to use and valuable for system design and documentation. The web-enabled applications have been written from the ground up to provide comparable functionality, but they are designed to run within a web page. This is brand new technology and Stardraw is proud to be the first company to our knowledge anywhere in the world to offer full CAD capability via the web. It's a significant development and we're very excited by it."
Where conventional software is shipped on CD and installed, Stardraw’s web-enabled applications are delivered through HTML pages, using tools which download themselves as and when they are needed. This means that all of the functionality, for instance Cut, Copy, Paste commands or drawing lines, is executed on the client side for speed, and symbols libraries, pricing etc are stored in databases on the server. An advantage of the client/server split is that even if your internet connection is broken, you can still continue to work and save your files locally.
Snipp continued: "We are showing these new applications to manufacturers and other corporate clients who are looking for flexible, scalable, custom software solutions. The beauty of a centralised, web-delivered application is that it’s very easy to maintain and update, and it can link to realtime data like pricing, stock levels and special offers. Our first custom web-based application, PanelBuilder, which went live on the RCI Custom website last month has already been a huge hit."
Samples of custom web-based applications can be seen and used at the web address below.
(Lee Baldock)
