"Newbie" Selecting Software for Architectural 3D Design/Visualization

[bmillen]

Hello:

 

I just joined this forum. I'm trying to help a good friend: "Greg".

 

Greg had an architecture background in college--but has been a partner/manager in a construction company for many years. He would like to start using 3D visualization to make it clearer to his workers the "order of work" and "the how of the work" prior to starting and during a project.

 

Greg is very sharp and very adept at doing 3D drawings MANUALLY. (That's the only option they had when he was in college.)

 

Greg would now like to obtain the software capability (and master it) so that he can put together 3D designs and visualizations himself. I don't know much about this whole area (my background is math, physics, and computer science), but I'm trying to help Greg make an initial choice of software for this purpose.

[ Perhaps my main "claim to fame" for this role is that I am a bit of an email and forum "junkie". This is a proclivity that Greg doesn't yet share. ]

 

My "plan" is to post this message and then have both Greg and I monitor the responses we get.

 

My guess is that Greg will want a package with the following general attributes as he "gets his feet wet" in this new area.

Not super expensive. (Greg and I haven't discussed this much.)

• Something that is fairly "reasonable" to learn. I think Greg will be a fast learner--but there doesn't seem to be any point in him starting with some super fancy powerhouse that's a "bear" to learn.
  
• It should be oriented to Architectural design and visualization.

 

I know that Greg is pretty "personal computer" savvy--but I don't know whether he uses a PC or a MAC. I will find that out and post it as soon as I can. My guess is that he has a PC. I will also try to find out the "horsepower" of his personal computer.

 

OK. I guess that's it for now. Thanks in advance!

 

--Bob

 

 

PS: This looks like such a neat WEB page and associated forum. I've read several messages. Please be as kind to Greg and I as you can--and use as few "insider terms" as possible. It's wonderful to use these terms if you also DEFINE them. I know, I'm asking for a lot.

[taleequale]

Hi,

 

MoI, Moment of Inspiration: http://moi3d.com/

 

Luxology Modo: http://www.luxology.com/

 

_

[maleemk]

Well, in my opinion for "Greg" the only software which can satisfy all of his needs described must be Google Skectup pro .

[bjornkn]

I agree that SketchUp would be a good choice.

[IceAged]

Agreed - Sketchup

[bmillen]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

MoI, Moment of Inspiration: http://moi3d.com/

 

Luxology Modo: http://www.luxology.com/

 

I have taken a brief look at these. I will look more after today's pressing "hoops" are behind me.

 

>> ... Moment of Inspiration [MoI] -- a brand-new 3D CAD program

>> that I've dubbed "SketchUp for MCAD users."

>>

>> http://www.upfrontezine.com/2006/upf-484.htm

 

Is the main reason for recommending MoI/LuxologyModo and SketchUp Pro ease of getting started and moderate cost? Can Greg use these products for a significant time without "running out of steam" when he starts to master more complicated applications?

 

Thanks.

 

--Bob

 

PS: I'd meant to through this pointer into my original post. There DO seem to be a lot of packages out there.

 

3D computer graphics software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics_software

[taleequale]

MoI at the moment is one of the best and most promising 3D CAD software.. it's very clever, simple and powerfull.. it has got many limitations, it's like a baby as your friend, but as modeler I think is one of the best I've ever put hands on..

 

SketchUp Pro is a very simple and friendly 3D CAD.. in minutes you can built a Mickey Mouse house.. but it doesn't give you the possibility to model an architecture as Zaha Hadid.. MoI can do that.. and I will tell you more.. MoI works better than Rhinoceros, the software used by Zaha's modelers..

 

With Modo you can do everything.. from a little spoon to a big city.. and you can also render and animate.. fast and simple.. it hasn't got the limitations of MoI neither those of SketchUp.. but..

 

but MoI is much more.. How could I say.. elegant.. conceptually elegant.. and clean.. to model now in 2008.. not only architecture.. not only static and "disaggregate" architecture.. I would say MoI.. definitely MoI.. cia'

 

_

[bjornkn]

SketchUp Pro is a very simple and friendly 3D CAD.. in minutes you can built a Mickey Mouse house.. but it doesn't give you the possibility to model an architecture as Zaha Hadid..

_

Yes, that's true that you can model a Mickey Mouse house (whatever that is) in a few minutes, but that it is not suited for more advanced architecture like Zaha Hadid is a general misconception that IMO is very wrong.

I guess that we are so used to think that to be a powerful program you need lots and lots of tools. SketchUp is built on the opposite concept - less is more, and it works great for most kinds of architecture. It wouldn't be my first choice for making a model of Gehrys Bilbao Guggenheim museum though. Or for tensile structures like the Millennium dome by Rogers in London.

 

I have never used MoI, but AFAIK it is a pure NURBS modeller (written by the same guy who wrote Rhino?)? I'm sure it may be very powerful and useful for many tasks, but I much prefer polygonal modelling rather than NURBS for "normal" architecture.

I had a look at MoIs web site, which was quite disappointing ,to be frank, and with very little info. I don't think that those pages will attract many architects or other people looking for a tool to model buildings - unfortunately. I have heard a lot of nice things about it before though, in the LighWave community, and am considering buying it myself, but not primarily for architectural work.

I actually found only one image of a building there - which could also have been made in SKetchUp, BTW, although a bit tricky with those double curved walls.

[exception]

Take a look at LightWave 3D. It's very complete out of the box, its render engine is amazing, has full animation capabilities, is affordable and has an immense amount of free and affordable plugins available to tune it to your needs. Also its community is very big, with lots of freebies, tutorials, and forums.

 

Sketchup is very nice for quick and simple modeling, but it doesn't render well and when things get complex, you have a problem. Modo is a very nice modeler, its render engine is decent but has near to no animation capabilities and no plugin architecture, so there are no extentions.

 

As said before, nurbs are really nice, but for architecture less useful. Rhino/MoI etc are nurbs modelers which can cause you problems when in/exporting anything to anything else, and huge problems when trying 3D prints, accurate light calculations with Radiance and so on.

 

LightWave plugins you might like are LwCAD: a powerful CAD extention package for the LightWave Modeler, Kray: the speed of Vray in LightWave, HD Instance: render millions upon millions of instances of anything on simple computers...

[bmillen]

Wow. What a useful discussion! I found a lot to think about in these longer comments.

 

First off, I found myself wanting to understand this whole NURBS and Polygon thing a bit better.

 

from http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Modeling_Glossary

 

 

 

NURBS Modeling

NURBS is short for “

Non Uniform Rational Bézier Spline

”. This modeling method uses a series of curves and control points to define the model’s shape. If you have already worked with the Pen tool in Photoshop, Illustrator and similar programs, you’ve worked with Bezier curves in 2D. NURBS take the same concept into 3D. According to Qarl Linden, NURBS are the best thing to use for sculpt prims; it makes some sense since he worked most recently in movie special effects where NURBS are commonly used.

 

Polygon Mesh

The

Polygon Mesh

is the most common modeling method used in 3D computer graphics (including Second Life). The process involves the direct manipulation of polygons (triangles and quadrilaterals), faces, vertices and edges to produce the desired shape.

 

I found more detail/discussion here.

 

from http://www.bkgrafix.net/Glossary.htm

 

N.U.R.B.S.

Stands for Non Uniform Riboflavin Bison Socks. No, wait, it's more like Non Uniform Rational B-Splines, or something like that. It's where I got my AIM screen name. NURBS is a way of representing curves and surfaces. A NURBS surface is infinitely smooth in theory, but is tesselated into polygons when it is time to render it. This is done because while ray-tracers may be able to intersect rays with the equations for a Nurbs surface, video cards will only accelerate the drawing of polygons, and other rendering methods can have difficulty with these complex equations. NURBS surfaces have the following limitations: Must be quadrilateral, but may have sides of zero length and may share a side with itself (to make triangles, tubes, and spheres). They cannot easily model sharp edges in a single continuous surface. Cannot easily model a long shape protruding from a flat shape in a single continuous surface. They have the following advantages: They have an inherent and naturally defined U-V space for texturing. Are technically "infinitely smooth" and can be tesselated at render time to any degree of smoothness. Can be dynamically tesselated in an animation, i.e. the configuration of polygons used to render the surface can change as the surface shape or distance from the camera change, using less computer power to tesselate when they are very small and allowing bends and folds to change and still retain a good tesselation. Can represent a large amount of geometry (as long as it is smooth geometry) using a very small number of points, so the tools used to animate the surface have much less work to do each frame. They can also naturally support a "curve-on-surface" construction, where a NURBS curve is defined on the NURBS surface within its inherent UV space, and can then be used to slice holes in the surface or create a protruding surface that is "perfectly connected" to the NURBS surface. The curve can also be translated and rotated on the surface itself, without popping off of it. (a curve-on-surface is either very tricky or impossible to achieve on the other modeling primitives, Polygons and Subdivision Surfaces, depending on the software you use. I'm sure it's possible to do, but as of version 4.0 Maya cannot do it. And Maya can do almost anything.)

 

Polygons

The basic modeling primitive, most widely known and used. NURBS surfaces and Subdivision surfaces are usually converted into polygons for rendering, because polygons are easy to draw in a scene and if created in large enough numbers appear to be smooth. Polygons have the following disadvantages: No inherent UV space, it must be defined manually. No inherent surface normals at vertices and edges, the handling of surface normals must be defined by the person making the model. Cannot support a "curve-on-surface" construction because the edges of adjacent polygons are jagged - but can be defined by the modeler either to appear smooth or to appear jagged, on a per-edge basis. So, since there is no standard treatment of normals in polygon objects, a curve-on-surface construction would not have the benefits that make it worth creating. Also, since even if a UV space and consistent normals are defined, polygons edges can be connected in any geometric configuration, so there is no way to translate a curve across a polygon surface. A polygon surface usually requires a large number of points to look good, and this makes them take much more computation to animate than other kinds of surfaces. Polygons have the following advantages: They can have any number of edges, from three (triangles) to four (quads) to any positive number (n-gons) and still have a well defined algorithm for drawing them as long as the polygon is flat. This means that polygons can be connected together in any conceivable arrangement, and still form a single continuous surface. The algorithms for splitting, multiplying and smoothing polygons are well defined and simple for a computer to perform, as are the algorithms for deleting points, edges, or entire polygons from any arbitrary surface. Polygons do not require tesselation to display, and are very simple to draw, quickly, in very large quantities, so they are ideal for realtime applications such as computer games where having to tesselate a Nurbs surface at every frame would not make sense. As the number of polygon vertices and the complexity of animations in video games increase, this may change soon.

 

Tesselation

The process of taking a surface that is a theoretical, mathematical, or incomplete construct, and converting it into polygons so it can be drawn on the screen or rendered as an image. Polygons are easy to draw and easy to collide with other polygons, so most other modeling surfaces are tesselated rather than rendered in their pure form. (For example, while polygonal surfaces exist as a collection of points and faces defined in 3D, NURBS surfaces exist as a set of polynomial equations, and subdivision surfaces exist only as an algorithm and a set of starting conditions. These surfaces are usually converted to polygons before being drawn in any way.)

 

SketchUp is built on the opposite concept - less is more, and it works great for most kinds of architecture. It wouldn't be my first choice for making a model of Gehrys Bilbao Guggenheim museum though. Or for [highlight]tensile structures[/highlight] like the Millennium dome by Rogers in London.

 

I'm a very "less is more" type of person. I think "minimalist" is the term that applies.

 

I'd like to understand your point a bit better about "tensile structures". I assume that none of the software that has been discussed is capable of "stress analysis". (?) While that seems unlikely to me, from the nature of Greg's projects, such a capability might be useful to him. (?)

 

As said before, nurbs are really nice, but for architecture less useful. Rhino/MoI etc are nurbs modelers which can cause you problems when in/exporting anything to anything else, and huge problems when trying 3D prints, accurate light calculations with Radiance and so on.

 

From the above "definitions" of NURBS, I would have thought that such modelers would be good for architecture. Is the difficulty only "in/exporting" with other packages often used in architecture?

 

When I saw the wikipedia page (my previous message) with so many choices (and it's probably an incomplete list), I figured that making this software selection might take a bit of learning to "narrow things down". I guess I already knew this from a bare bones 3D package (no animation) that I used on my PC years ago--when we had to redo both bathrooms because of a "hidden" water leak.

 

Well, thanks again to everyone. Further thoughts on the questions I raised above or about other considerations would be appreciated.

 

--Bob

 

PS: Sorry how long this got. The long WEB page quotes also seemed the most interesting to me.

[bjornkn]

Tensile structures may be tents or similar, where a soft material curves from its own weight, and where there is a supporting, rigid system (poles etc) to control this. It can be done in SketchUp too, like with the SoapBubble plugin. But I don't know how physically correct it will be.

As most buildings contains lots of straight edges, and often quite a lot of small details, I think most people prefer polygonal modelling, eventually combined with SubdivideSurfaces like in LightWave etc, for very smooth curwed walls etc. SketchUp does not have SubD, thus you either have to make very short curve segments, or live with more facetted curve. Averything is usually converted to polys in the end anyway.

In addition to SU I also use LightWave, which is a very good program in many ways, with a great renderer. But when it comes to modelling I can build a model in SU at a fraction of the time it takes me in LW. Not to mention the time it takes to make changes if the clients wants to change something (which they often do) But then I don't have that daily LW modelling training, so I often have to look around to find the tools I need.

One of the strengths of SU is that it usually reads dwg/dxf files without any problems, and that it has a very versatile snapping/inference system that makes it very quick to build using the plans/elevations for snapping/reference.

[jonofj]

Hi just wanted say

 

that i started using archicad 11 not long now and its really good for architectural building 3d models , it has preseting walls, windows , colums, very builing oriented...not as scultputred.

rendering in it is not too bad uses lightwave...but once the model is done...I take it into artlantis 2.0 and it gives very fast and easy of use renderings....touch it up in photoshop.

 

U can also download the demos and try them out.

and my computer is not a super comp im still using a Pentium4 3.0ghz , 1gig Ram.

 

example attached...(hopefully it attaches)

[bmillen]

Two more very helpful posts!

 

bjornkn, thank you for your clear description of "tensile structures". Your comparison between SketchUp and LightWave was also very illuminating.

 

jonofj, thank you for your clear description of your process--even including an example rendering. The attachment came through fine and looks very neat to me.

 

I just read through everyone else's posts on the thread again. Because of busyness on my part, Greg and I haven't had a chance to talk about this topic for well over a week. I think the next step for us may be to try some of the free demonstration downloads. It seems pretty clear to me at this point that we should, at a minimum, look at SketchUp Pro and LightWave.

 

[ I'll probably have to use my youngest son's PC for this. My 10+ year old clunker with Win98SE surely isn't equal to the task. After I replace my wife's PC, then I will replace mine. My main hang-up seems to be time rather than money. Granted, I don't seem to like to buy things. I suppose It's part of my minimalist orientation. :| ]

I found the comments about MoI and Luxology Modo kind of intriguing. I wonder if MoI might happen to "mature" as a product at a rate adequate for Greg's needs. (?) If archicad 11 is particularly oriented to architecture, we might also take a look at it.

 

I think I have a much better idea of NURBS, Polygons, and Subdivision Surfaces. bjornkn has been able to help me "get" the advantages of Polygonal Modeling and Subdivision Surfaces for architectural work.

 

Thanks so much to all. I don't know when I'll manage to talk to Greg again or to find the time for some of my own "playing" with free downloads. I have a possible project coming up that may give me "an excuse" for getting some of this software myself. (?)

 

In the meantime any additional thoughts, considerations, or recommendations will be much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

--Bob

 

 

PS: This is "off topic". I was reminded of an incident from my oldest son's youth by this exchange.

 

SketchUp Pro is a very simple and friendly 3D CAD.. in minutes you can built a Mickey Mouse house ...

...Yes, that's true that you can model a Mickey Mouse house (whatever that is) in a few minutes, ...

 

 

We were visiting my folks in Iowa when my oldest two boys were pretty young. Perhaps my oldest was four at the time. My wife had brought some powdered milk for us--to save cost and trips to the store. It's what we always used at home (Texas).

 

My Dad at one point referred to it with disdain as "Mickey Mouse milk". This had the opposite effect on my son as the one my Dad intended. My son was now even more enamored with the powdered milk we used--because it was now associated with Mickey Mouse! At that time my son probably would have also been impressed by a "Mickey Mouse House".

[bjornkn]

I was curious about how a Mickey Mouse house really looked, and found this one, among others:

Certainly not an easy modelling task in any 3D program

Curves everywhere, so this may actually be better suited for NURBS...

Or maybe SubD. Like shown on the attached screen dump from LightWave you can get pretty smooth curved surfaces from a very simple polygonal mesh. The greens are poly, and the blues are the same poly mesh with SubD applied.

[taleequale]

Hi all,

 

actually I'm an happy Lightwave and LW-CAD user.. I found that some tasks are possible only with LW.. I mean with simplicity.. I've used very many modelers and cad programs and I've stopped to LW because I found it incomparable..

 

but.. but some years ago the two main programmers of LW went away from Newtek to build a new software house called Luxology and started to work on MODO..

 

if I advice you MODO instead of LW is because the genius you can found in LW now is in MODO.. the interface is easier and much better than LW.. many tasks done in LW with the use of plug-ins you can do directly in MODO.. LW-CAD is an example.. now is getting out the v.3 of LW-CAD with the "user coordinate system".. this is something that in MODO it has been resolved from the v.1

 

anyway.. at the moment I think that LW is still comparable or maybe better then MODO but in the future I'm afraid the second one will win..

 

P.S. MODO can have as many plug-ins as LW..

 

P.P.S. ArchiCAD, REVIT are good when you have to produce many drawings.. like plans, sections.. but often the model, the complex model, they build is too heavy and useless compared to a model built with a 3D CAD or a Modeler.. meaning ArchiCAD, REVIT and similars as object oriented CAD

 

_

[bmillen]

I've been having a hard time getting back to this discussion--even though my InBox has told me that there is "new activity". Sometimes the rest of life interferes too much with what I really want to do! :|

 

bjornkn, that really IS a Mickey Mouse house! I also really appreciated your attachment. It provides such neat examples of polygon mesh and Subdivision Surfaces. I really appreciate you taking the time to create and include these examples.

 

taleequale, you provided some great insight and background for your interest in Luxology and the MODO product.

 

With Modo you can do everything.. from a little spoon to a big city.. and you can also render and animate.. fast and simple.. it hasn't got the limitations of MoI neither those of SketchUp.. but..

 

but MoI is much more.. How could I say.. elegant.. conceptually elegant.. and clean.. to model now in 2008.. not only architecture.. not only static and "disaggregate" architecture.. I would say MoI.. definitely MoI.. cia'

 

[ What is "cia"? ]

I have never used MoI, but AFAIK ["as far as I know" - bmillen had to look this up!] it is a pure NURBS modeller (written by the same guy who wrote Rhino?)? I'm sure it may be very powerful and useful for many tasks, but I much prefer polygonal modelling rather than NURBS for "normal" architecture.

 

taleequale, IS MoI a NURBS modeler? Is MODO a NURBS modeler? I'm curious and also I have an "ulterior motive". If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I thought it would be interesting to see a NURBS type rendering of figures like the ones in bjornkn's attachment. (?) Don't bother if it's a big hassle. I don't really know the effort required for what I'm requesting.

 

By the way, bjornkn, what are the little white dashed "hairs" on the figures in the right column (Subdivision Surfaces) of your attachment?

 

taleequale, your eloquence about MODO and MoI leads me to think that Greg and I should maybe at least "play with" them a bit.

 

Thanks again to you two. I feel that this thread is really helping me understand the various considerations involved with this software selection. Perhaps after we pick a modeler I'll have to try to model the Mickey Mouse House.

 

--Bob

[D.B.]

Let me muddy the waters even more.. :-)

 

Rhino WILL take care of modeling and design issues, is very easy to learn, and produce elevations, plans and perspective that can be noted, and dimensioned in 2d...but it costs ..(maybe 1/3 of Max or Autocad), and you will never outgrow it... Rhino has a LOT more to offer than MOI....(I own both).... The only downside to nurbs programs that I've found is that they don't make very clean polygon conversions, but that hardly matters in Arch-Viz with modern computer.

 

Kerkythea is a very nice rendering program that would work as a starter, and it's free.... It also has an active support group, and seems to be developing in a positive direction.

 

This is just to give you another perspective.

 

D.B.

[bmillen]

D.B., thank you for your perspective. I'm afraid I've been having trouble finding the time to make another post to this thread during the last couple of days.

 

Rhino ... and produce elevations, plans and perspective that can be noted, and dimensioned in 2d ...

 

Is the implication here that SketchUp and LightWave don't have these capabilities? I briefly used a relatively inexpensive 3D CAD package many years ago that had these capabilities.

 

[ I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the package. I still have some files created by it with file extensions of "DW3" and "VW3" on my computer. (?) ]

The only downside to nurbs programs that I've found is that they don't make very clean polygon conversions, but that hardly matters in Arch-Viz with modern computer.

 

Please explain this point. Why doesn't it matter? Does it have something to do with the raw processing power of modern computers. (?)

 

Thanks again.

 

--Bob

[konstantin]

What software is the company using at the moment?

[bjornkn]

Is the implication here that SketchUp and LightWave don't have these capabilities?

SketchUp can do all that without any problems, and LW can do some of it too. SketchUp actually comes with a companion program, Layout (like LW) that is a program targeted at making presentations with several (live) scene/model renderings, text, dimensions etc. But you can also do it inside SU itself.

Please explain this point. Why doesn't it matter? Does it have something to do with the raw processing power of modern computers. (?)

Probably that NURBS models will export with lots and lots of polys that aren't needed to describe the form?

[bmillen]

What software is the company using at the moment?

 

It is my impression that they aren't using any software. Since I started this thread my friend Greg (who is a partner/manager in a construction company) has been traveling in California. He's been away from his computer--so hasn't been able to follow this thread yet. He did call a few days ago. I think he will be arriving home later this evening.

 

Greg and I are hoping to meet and talk about all of this during the upcoming week. My impression is that any "in house" drawings they do are currently created "manually". (?)

 

The 3D CAD software I used at home was on a previous computer. I've been using my current computer for about 12 years. I suppose I used this old 3D CAD software over 15 years ago. I bought it "on sale" at some computer software show when I knew that I would be doing some drawings for a bathroom "redo" at my house. My needs at the time were modest and the package I bought was adequate.

 

I'm sure I have the box for that software somewhere around here. It's probably in a storage box in the garage. We're in the process of a house move--so I can't seem to easily put my hands on it.

 

bjornkn, thanks for clarifying things for me.

 

... and produce elevations, plans and perspective that can be noted, and dimensioned in 2d ...

SketchUp can do all that without any problems, and LW can do some of it too. SketchUp actually comes with a companion program, Layout (like LW) that is a program targeted at making presentations with several (live) scene/model renderings, text, dimensions etc. But you can also do it inside SU itself.

 

I gather that you're giving SketchUp a slight "edge" over LightWave relative to these kind of typical 3D CAD features. (?)

 

Thanks.

 

--Bob

[D.B.]

Bob,

 

Rhino is used extensively in the industrial design field to design and describe design and construction. You can use it as as a tool tool for creation of 3d objects, then communicate with line drawings (with or without dimensions)from any angle, or make a 3d model that can be rendered with any rendering software.

 

The reason I suggested Rhino is because your friend is going to communicate with contractors. The program cost is very reasonable, it's easy to learn and use, and in my experience, is extremely capable of doing construction and assembly drawings of complicated structures. I use it instead of Autocad for 2-d drafting too. Try downloading a trial version first. (No I do not get a commision on Rhino sales.. :-) )

 

Rhino will create lots, and lots of polygons for the rendering program to deal with, because it's designed to output to CAM programs, but this has never been a problem for me, and I've been using Rhino for the last 10 years.

 

Form-Z will do much the same thing, as will Autocad.

 

Hope this helps,

 

D.B

[bmillen]

D.B.:

 

Your latest post caused me to reread this tread.

 

One of the strengths of SU is that it usually reads dwg/dxf files without any problems, and that it has a very versatile snapping/inference system that makes it very quick to build using the plans/elevations for snapping/reference.

 

I don't know the significance of "dwg/dxf" files. Are these "industry standard" files?

 

Rhino is used extensively in the industrial design field to design and describe design and construction. You can use it as a tool for creation of 3d objects, then communicate with line drawings (with or without dimensions) from any angle, or make a 3d model that can be rendered with any rendering software.

 

The reason I suggested Rhino is because your friend is going to communicate with contractors.

 

D.B., your comments have me really looking forward to my next conversation with Greg. In terms of drawings, I don't know what his "interface" is like with contractors and customers.

 

The main thing Greg has expressed so far is wanting to do visualizations for his customers and his employees. I don't really know the level of his requirement for "industry standard" CAD drawings with various elevations and other options. My guess is that such industry standard drawings would be very desirable--but I'm just guessing.

 

Maybe this thread has "come to the end of it's rope" until Greg can read through it and provide some feedback.

 

D.B., I appreciate your comments.

 

--Bob

[bjornkn]

Dwg/dxf are Autocad files, very common for exporting/importing in CAD programs. Many 3D visualization programs have problems reading them.

 

Yes, I think it's time for Greg (and you) to start testing free versions and trials. There are several other programs out there too that may serve (some of) your needs, like Silo, Hexagon, Carrera, Blender and so on, if you really want to get confused. A lot of programs are capable of making architecture, but not all are equally suitable for it.

SketchUp fulfills your 3 original requirements very well: Low price, very easy to learn (nothing comes close;), and targeted at architecture. It is also very well suited for showing how-tos and work orders, complete with text, dimensions, arrows etc right out of the box. And you can send the models to clients/employees with the Viewer (or free version) and let them walk along your pre-made routes, or move interactively around in the model, make simple animations/tutorials that "tell the story", or print "work sheets". If you need photo realistic images you could always use one of the free or commercial renderers out there.

 

I hope you don't forget the original intent here? It is very easy to fall iinto the same trap that so many amateur photographers fall into; they buy a dSLR with mediocre kit lens because they are afraid to end up with something that isn't powerful enough in the future. And then they may end up with a camera that shoots lower quality photos than a good non-dSLR camera, and that stays at home most of the time because it is too heavy and big to carry around. Not to mention that it will always be run in fully automatic mode with only that one cheap kit lens - iow very little of its potential power is ever utilized...

Much better to use a tool that gets the job done, without all the extra bells and whistles.

[bjornkn]

I just saw a web page that shows a nice example on how SketchUp is being used to describe a project, with text, measurements etc.

http://blogs.taunton.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?webtag=fw-designforum

Worth a look