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3d CAD v Max


beowulf
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at school, i use both autocad arch. desktop (for plans, sections, and elevations) and 3ds max (for all my 3d work). my question is: is there any advantage to using cad to make a 3d model over max, should i bother learning cad's 3d attributes at all? it seems like a pain, and other students' cad renderings dont look so great when compaired to max's

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im sure there was a thread somewere here about this.. you can search for that because it has pretty much covered this topic.

 

basically, users use autocad becaude of its precision. (although max has snaps also, its not as easy to use as autocad's imho). max though has greater flexibility, moe modelling options and, yes, far better renderings.

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3D AutoCAD is for people who are yet to see the light
are you kidding? who are you kidding? yourself?

your message violates several of This Boards Rules and sense of Professional ettiquette

 

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Flame out, dude, grow up

 

Thanks

 

Randy

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3D AutoCAD is for people who are yet to see the light
Kid,

Your correct in a purely illustration sense. But 3D Autocads workflow throught the design process from the Architectural viewpiont is very good. You can model a cabinet, for example, very effiently and accuratly in autocad. Shaped profiles, panels and so on. Import into viz max and create whatever kind of illustration for a client, explore material options, finishes, but really communicate the design.

 

Then go back to autocad and prepare drawings from the model, that are real world, accurate. If the cabinet makers chiesel is not to sharp -pun- you could actually give them the pieces ie cutlists with diagrams. Also create material schedules right down to the last nail, import that information into a data base and use it for pricing the work.

 

Yes kid I've seen the light, for illustration but I think the shadow it casts has a different HSV than the one you see casts, respectfully.

 

 

should i bother learning cad's 3d attributes at all?
Beowolf,

 

Yes, it's a powerful tool. Seems like ADT will in the near future have viz/max to some degree fully incorporated in it.

Attributes like revolve, extrude, 3dface, slice are so much easier in cad. Up the Isolines setting for export to vizmax. Not to mention the union, subtract and intersect functions are almost flawless in cad and in max "if you got the time and cpu resources and patience" for complex shapes. The key is of course is learing how to link & work with them on the max platform, which is not too difficult.

 

Good Luck on your studies, never blow off an oppurtunity to learn. You never know when it will help you in the future even though it seems like BS now.

 

regrds

WDA

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I think learning autoCAD is essential as most of the company still use autoCAD, and I don't see it been phase out anytime soon. 3DS MAX on the other hand, is for CG, presentation material. You can't do your CD/SD/AD on those, it simply is not the tool to use.

There are other apps that bridges between those 2 kinda vastly different apps, apps like ArchiCAD and Revit, which let you design in 3D while making your elevation and sections automatically at the same time. The future ofcourse is these apps, unless you can afford those apps when you graduated, but for now, autoCAD skill is still essential.

 

-RM

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It seams odd that no one mentions the design value of 3d studio. Some of the most interesting projects I've seen viz/revit used for are situations where the architect chooses to consider variations. Some one that knows viz/revit can bang out 3d design options much faster then autocad and still have accurate models.

Recently, I was impressed with a former professor?s office who upgraded to revit and used it to visualize a wide array of facade/roof variations for a housing development in Massachusetts (usa).

 

-joe

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THere no REAL comparison. AutoCAD is a Computer Aided Design Tool - used to make precision drawings. MAX is a visualization tool. Just cuz they both involve 3D and both can be fairly closely linked, does not mean that one is "better" than another - they do different jobs, but can complement each other quite well.

 

In my mind, its not that much different than asking "is Excel better than MS Word?". How would you answer that?

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to drop my hat in..................

i use a knife+fork for a steak a spoon for soup and sometimes i use chopsticks on a chinese meal

and when eating indian meals at home it's hand and nann bread

they all have uses in the process of eating a meal

so use whatever tools you need to do the work you need learn and practice with cad and visual tools think and treat them as one think of them as a means of communication and find the strenghts and weakness of them through experimentation

only through pushing yourself and your choice(s) of software will you be able to develop a style of your own which becomes even more important if you design the project you are visualising

it's a long road and it has no end and all this talk of food means i need a snack break

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Dear

 

There is one very important reason to learn max's modeling tools and this reason comes into play when trying to produce animations:

 

In AutoCAD modeling is straight forward enough, we all draw lines and shapes, use extrusions and boolean opperations. Its the latter wich causes the problems. AutoCAD is not very good at keeping the tesselation on a mesh tight after a boolean command. The result is flicking faces during an animation as the renderer tries to interperate what it is that auto cad has done.

Also, during the import of a 3d model from AutoCAD it is dificult to control smoothing groups ( essential for reducing the amount of polys in a scene ) and also weld points on vertices. The dialogue box prompts you to give it parameters to put limits on the way it converts from a solid model to a mesh. I have found that when modeling in max you have control of such items as you build, plus with the modifiers you can tweek and pull vertices, edges etc until you are happy.

 

The result, a nice clean flicker free model wich will be lighter than any AutoCAD model.

 

Any questions are welcome and i will try to answer them as soon as i get a chance

 

Regards

 

Edward Bruce-Radcliffe

Digital Artist

4site

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