1.1. Welcome to IQcad

IQcad is a 2D/3D CAD application for engineering and civil survey work. It combines standard drafting tools with specialised civil objects — survey points, TIN surfaces, horizontal alignments, profiles, corridors, gradings and culverts — plus large-scale point cloud handling, tunnel section analysis and coordinate transformations.

1.1.1. What IQcad Does

Drafting. The full set of everyday CAD tools: lines, polylines, arcs, circles, splines, hatches, text, tables and dimensions, organised in layers with linetypes, text styles and dimension styles. Editing follows the familiar select-then-modify model with grips, object snaps, and a command line that accepts AutoCAD-style command names. Spatial indexing and type-side document lists keep pick, OSNAP, civil tools and TRIM responsive on large drawings.

Civil engineering. Survey points with styles and groups, TIN surfaces with contours, breaklines, decimation and earthwork volume reports, horizontal alignments with spirals and a PI table editor, profile views, cross-section sheets, assemblies and corridors, site gradings, parametric box culverts, parcels, and a tunnel section line deviation analysis.

Point clouds. Import LAS/LAZ, E57, PLY, PTS/PTX and text formats with hundreds of millions of points, render them with adaptive level of detail, clip them by elevation, and cut vertical or horizontal sections that can be traced into plottable 2D drawings.

Drone survey. A GeoTIFF DEM and an orthophoto become survey points, breaklines and a surface in the drawing.

Interoperability. Native .iqz drawings, an in-process DWG reader and writer covering R2000 to R2018 with no external converter, DXF exchange, LandXML, GeoJSON, Esri JSON (Hellenic Cadastre), KML/KMZ, Shapefile, SVG, PDF and image export. Civil 3D COGO points, point groups, TIN surfaces, parcels and alignments are read from DWG and can be written back as genuine Civil 3D objects.

Automation. Command scripts, embedded Python and Pascal scripting, and a native plugin SDK for compiled extensions.

1.1.2. Supported Platforms

IQcad runs natively on Windows (x86-64), Linux (x86-64) and macOS (Apple Silicon).

1.1.3. How This Manual Is Organized

  • Licensing — the license manager, the five modules, and the commands each module unlocks.

  • CAD Environment — the interface, drawings, navigation, drawing and modification tools, selection, layers and styles, blocks, the Object Inspector, the command line, format settings, import/export, DWG compatibility, sheet layout and printing, and the application settings.

  • Super Tools — Express/CadTools-style cleanup and polyline helpers (flatten, simplify, and more as the suite grows).

  • Civil Module — the Civil Toolspace and every civil object type, from survey points to corridors, culverts and sites.

  • Point Cloud Module — importing, displaying, managing and sectioning point clouds.

  • Drone Module — Drone Survey from a DEM and an orthophoto.

  • Command Reference — every command recognised by the command line, keyboard shortcuts, and the factory defaults.

  • SDK — command scripting, the Python and Pascal scripting references, the native plugin SDK, and the Blade Runner script editor.

  • Tutorials — step-by-step guides for common civil workflows.

  • Features and Changelog — a feature summary and the release history.