Which 3D?

[Perko]

My company needs to get 3D capability but I'm undecided which version to go for. We currently have 2007 LT.

We do drawings for roof and wall cladding for the construction industry. The shapes of buildings being dreamt up now make the need for 3D capability more & more necessary........................

Looking on Autodesk website there is Architectural Desktop, Autocad 2008, Inventor and Civils 3D :shock:

Anybody give me a clue as to which would be best suited to my business.

Thanks
Nick

[f700es]

SketchUp!
www.sketchup.com (http://www.sketchup.com)

Give it a try.

[jdkriek]

Architectural Desktop, its stupid easy to do an entire fully detailed 3D house in less than a day. I did a complete two story house with everything in a few hours.

[f700es]

Architectural Desktop, its stupid easy to do an entire fully detailed 3D house in less than a day. I did a complete two story house with everything in a few hours.

Yes, ADT is a good package but maybe overkill for what he needs. That and the $4,995 price tag to boot. I guess I sugested SketchUp since it will work well with their LT package and it only costs $495.

[jdkriek]

ADT is well worth the investment if you do it all day everyday in my opinion. I have never personally used Sketchup, so I don’t know how good it is. I have however heard good things about it.

[Perko]

Hey fellas ,

Thanks for the advice. I've downloaded a demo of Sketchup 6.0 pro and I'll give it a try. I've looked at the first tutorials and they look impressive.

However, we don't just draw pretty pictures. We have to produce accurate material call offs and prepare 2D sections through. So is sketchup suitable? Bear in mind also that we'll need to do alterations to the model that'll need to be updated in the 2D sections. I'll bow to the greater knowledge on here..........

We had a demo of ADT a year ago, the demo tutor said it wasn't what we needed and suggested we stay with 2D for the time being. ADT from my limited knowledge of it relates to fairly standard details - perhaps they can be adapted to suit the particular environment you work in I dunno?

[f700es]

SketchUP can do any precision you need in house building. I used to work for a house builder last year and we used ADT-05 and SU. ADT was way overkill for what we needed. Sure it worked but it was like putting a 350 ci V8 on a weedeater. Sure it will work but not what was really needed for the task at had.

SU can do details as well.
http://f700es.googlepages.com/SU-example.jpg


Hey fellas ,

Thanks for the advice. I've downloaded a demo of Sketchup 6.0 pro and I'll give it a try. I've looked at the first tutorials and they look impressive.

However, we don't just draw pretty pictures. We have to produce accurate material call offs and prepare 2D sections through. So is sketchup suitable? Bear in mind also that we'll need to do alterations to the model that'll need to be updated in the 2D sections. I'll bow to the greater knowledge on here..........

We had a demo of ADT a year ago, the demo tutor said it wasn't what we needed and suggested we stay with 2D for the time being. ADT from my limited knowledge of it relates to fairly standard details - perhaps they can be adapted to suit the particular environment you work in I dunno?

[CromCruithne]

I'll fully admit I never dove into Sketchup like I wanted to. To many irons in the fire as ti is. I can say that ADT sounds like it's right where you want to be though. Just realize that ADT isn't something you're just going to pick up after having used ACAD. It is it's own program and works very differently from ACAD.
I know that ADT can do the updated section views and such that you're asking for. As for the bill of materials, I'm not sure if it will or not.

-Crom

[Perko]

SketchUP can do any precision you need in house building. I used to work for a house builder last year and we used ADT-05 and SU. ADT was way overkill for what we needed. Sure it worked but it was like putting a 350 ci V8 on a weedeater. Sure it will work but not what was really needed for the task at had.

SU can do details as well.


Thanks for the advise. I have to question the precision aspect though, particularly as the SketchUp User Guide says in the first chapter;

"SketchUp is not the same as Computer Assisted Design or CAD. CAD applications are designed specifically for representing concrete information, while SketchUp is for exploration and design of concepts and ideas (though you are not prohibited from designing models that are as concrete or accurate as those designed in CAD)."

I've taken the liberty of defacing your picture of the building - very nice it is though, please forgive me :oops: and ask the question can sketchup produce a cross section through where I have highlighted on your drawing for example? With sufficient accuracy for me to be able to call off the materails required to build the detail?

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z303/Perko1/SU-example.jpg

Crom thanks for your help, I'll research ADT, it would be great if there was a package that produced bills of materials as well, but I wonder if that's perhaps asking a bit to much :unsure:

Thanks
Nick

[f700es]

Sure it can. It can take a live section anywhere.

http://f700es.googlepages.com/su-section.jpg

watch the video tutorials on the SU website to see what it can do.