CAD diff

If you are a construction engineer or an architect, then chances are that besides everything else, you will have to deal with more or less complicated building plans.

Fortunately, you can streamline the process to a great extent with specialized tools such as CAD diff. As you may have guessed based on its self-explanatory name, this utility makes it very simple for you to view two CAD documents side by side.

Getting started with the app is not at all a nuisance since you are only required to unzip the app's package and then launch it via its designated executable.

Before anything, you should know that the utility comes with support for the most common image formats out there, namely BMP, GIF, PNG, PSD and SVG, just to name a few.

The app can be used for comparing VSD, DWG and DXF files but only if you make sure that MS Visio is installed on your computer.

Upon first launching the app, you are met by a compact window that allows you to load the two files that need to be visually compared. Please note that the base file appears on the left and the modified file on the right side of the main window.

The interface is not what you would call modern and, truth must be told, looks a bit out of place on the latest versions of Windows.

You should be able to get passed this small inconvenience, since the interface is actually very well suited for the visual comparison work since it offers almost no distractions.

As you can imagine, the workflow is quite basic: you can compare the images side-by-side, compare the images with different sizes or take advantage of the useful 'Fit to window' feature.

What is more, you can trim the 'compared image' and export with in no time thanks to a dedicated button located on the minimalist top-toolbar.

While it may not be the most stylish CAD viewer out there, there is no denying that CAD diff is a very handy application, especially for users who do not have full-featured CAD apps that bundle equal or side-by-side image differentiation functions.