Articles and Press Releases

A CAD development company's view of where IcARX shines, where it required workarounds, and what we'd tell another team starting today.

This is part of a series sharing how development companies are using IcARX to bring their products to IntelliCAD-based CAD platforms. IcARX is the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium's ObjectARX®-compatible C++ API. For developers with existing ObjectARX projects, it offers a familiar API surface and a practical path to a new host CAD without a complete rewrite.

Why This Post Exists

If you're a development team weighing whether to bring an existing ObjectARX-based product to a new CAD platform, the questions you actually want answered are technical. Will my code compile and behave the way I expect? Where will I hit friction? What kind of testing matrix should I plan for?

This post is built around those questions. The source is a structured Q&A with Cadomation's CEO, Imran Anees, about their work bringing SPCAD, an advanced geospatial and surveying toolkit with more than 180 specialized commands, into the progeCAD environment using the IcARX API.

Three Months, One Familiar API, and a New Market: Aplitop's Journey Bringing tcpMDT to progeCAD

How a 20-year-old geospatial software company added another CAD platform to its lineup using the IcARX API, what the migration actually looked like, and what they wish had been easier.

This is part of a series sharing how development companies are using IcARX to bring their products to IntelliCAD-based CAD platforms. IcARX is the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium's ObjectARX®-compatible C++ API. For developers with existing ObjectARX projects, it offers a familiar API surface and a practical path to a new host CAD without a rewrite.

The Story

For more than two decades, Aplitop has built software for surveyors, civil engineers, and construction professionals. Their flagship CAD-based product, tcpMDT®, is in daily use in over 80 countries and runs on a handful of major CAD platforms. In late 2024 and through 2025, Aplitop added one more: progeCAD, the IntelliCAD-based CAD platform from progeSOFT.

When developers and software companies first look at building on IntelliCAD, the same question comes up almost every time: "Where do I actually start, and what's the right fit for my product?"

It's a fair question. IntelliCAD powers hundreds of commercial CAD applications around the world, from specialized plugins to full vertical products used by engineers, surveyors, architects, and manufacturers. But that range is exactly why a single answer doesn't work. The right way to build on IntelliCAD depends on what kind of application you're trying to deliver and who your customers are.

Here are the four main paths developers take, and how to figure out which one fits your goals.

If you develop CAD applications using the Autodesk® ObjectARX® API, your development workflow is probably built around Autodesk AutoCAD®. Your code compiles against the ObjectARX SDK, you test inside AutoCAD, and your users run AutoCAD. It works.

But what if your application could run on another platform without rewriting a single line of code?

That’s what the IcARX API makes possible. IcARX is IntelliCAD’s ObjectARX-compatible C++ API, and it lets you take your existing ARX source code, recompile it against the IcARX SDK, and run it inside IntelliCAD. No porting. No rewrites. Just a recompile.

We put together a short video to show you exactly what that looks like.

AutoLISP® is often used to solve practical problems in CAD workflows, with small custom commands that save time and reduce repetitive work. What has traditionally been missing in IntelliCAD is a modern, developer-friendly way to write and debug those scripts.

With IntelliCAD 14.0, the new VLISP command introduces a Visual LISP–style debugging workflow using Visual Studio Code, powered by the IntelliCAD LISP Debugger extension.

This update focuses on how developers actually work today: using a modern editor, stepping through code, inspecting variables, and refining logic until it behaves correctly.

IntelliCAD comes with so many APIs that it was a good idea to review them at the 2017 conference in Auckland.