Photoshop in AutoCAD

[mritzman]

I'm a junior architect, just learning the ropes (Oh yeah, this is my first post). I'm pretty good with Photoshop, but just learning AutoCAD.

 

I'm occasionally given hand drawn plans which I scan then color in Photoshop. I color plans in Photoshop using vector masks because they are very editable. These paths can be exported to Illustrator. Illustrator can export .dwg files. My paths can then be used in AutoCAD, but since they aren't created with extreme precision I'm not sure how useful they would be in in the end.

 

Has anybody tried bringing sketches to AutCAD through Photoshop? How useful are those paths once they are in AutoCAD?

 

--matt

[angelo]

Matt,

 

I'd stay away from trying to export paths to lines, to ACAD. Sketching and rendering in Photoshop are all about presentation (and tend to be less about precision).

 

If you are looking for a quick way to translate sketched ideas to ACAD, save the image as a tif, and place it in ACAD. Using a known dimension, scale the sketch so that you can use it as a background.

 

Begin drawing in ACAD using the background image for reference. However, draw your lines to specific dimensions, not what the sketch may read. Think about what the overall intent dimensionally is, and massage the ACAD drawing to reflect this. (Start with overall dimensions, then ad the detail.)

 

As a side note, if you are drawing the lines in ACAD for use in models, use polylines, for 2D stuff use lines.

 

 

Hope this gets you going...