BPT-Pro

Designed for artists and graphic designers alike, Adobe Illustrator is a mighty application specialized in creating vector images or scalable vector artwork. Even though it's pretty much unparalleled within its field, that is not to say that it can't still be improved to better suit your needs and workflow.

For example, you can enhance Illustrator's 2D-CAD capabilities with the help of a lightweight and useful plug-in dubbed BPT-Pro.

In just a few words, this plug-in adds 19 specialized tools directly within Illustrator's Tools panel. These tools themselves are easily reachable, especially since they're thoroughly organized in 8 self-explanatory categories such as Oblique Dimension, Radius and Diameter, Fillet, Angle, Slant, Arc, Comment, and Schedule.

The plug-in is fairly well integrated with Adobe's Illustrator, hence working with all the instruments feels quite natural. You can now accurately measure objects and segments and even vertical, horizontal, oblique and curved lines, as well as measure the radius and diameter of any arc. With the Angle tools, you can also estimate the angles from inside and outside of specific objects.

That's not all, the editing and drawing tools are even better. You can effortlessly cut or "peel" off any square edge to round various shapes and draw 2 or 3-point arcs. Also noteworthy is the plug-in's comment tool that allows you to conveniently label any object. Last but not least, the Tile Block or Schedule tool is ideally suited for official projects since it lets you instantly add a title block with intuitive drag and drop actions.

To sum it all up, if your weapon of choice is Adobe's Illustrator, but you feel that its CAD-related features are a bit weak, then BPT-Pro is definitely worthy of your attention. This small plug-in is capable of transforming Illustrator in a reasonably competent 2D-CAD tool.