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Making color plans out of CAD


cyberderf
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Thanks all

 

Using Illustrator for me has been a great source of nightmares. Files quickly becomes huge and hard to handle. Selecting some areas is very difficult.

 

And finally, layers in Illustration is a solution to faster the process, but it was not so easy for me to get used to them.

 

Photoshop is ok, but i'm still looking for a way to add ''life'' to the thing. Anyone having succes using Paint or some other specialized software like M-Color ? Any technique with Photoshop you would like to share ?

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It's like Illustrator but much better and easier to use it.
I have wanted to use Freehand, but ended up having to buy Illustrator because Freehand has MAJOR problems importing EPS files properly. If you are thinking of trying FH be sure to test with the trial first. It's a largely known problem that FH can not read EPS file correctly.

Depends how you plan to export from you CAD package however.

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I use Illustrator and/or photoshop usually because I collage in photographs aswell as colour.

 

 

If it's just flat fills of colour don't forget, autocad has colours too. Fill an area with a solid hatch colour, using DRAWORDER send the colour hatch to the back (so it doesn't print over the linework), then set the colour to print in that colour instead of black.

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I use Photoshop 7 because...well because its the only way I know how to do it. But thats besides the point.

 

I also like it because it has the 'pattern maker' feature, whis is great for creating tileable textures that you can paint with. So all I've done for my plan view sites is to make a few good patterns like gravel, grass, concrete, asphalt, etc. Then I just magic wand everything and brush within the lines.

 

Put everything on seperate layers, put in some fake shadows w/ transparency and you are set!

 

The nice part is you can still print plans like that to scale if you need to. Best of both worlds.

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Photoshop is could work nice for the workflow part of it - magicwand, new layer, fill - easy to change colors later.

However it depends what you want to do with it later on. With Illustrator or Freehand (which I like better) it stays a vector file, while Photoshop will raster it and increase its file size dramatically.

BTW: we use ACAD for it (what happens when the design changes? - export again to EPS/PDF...), but I think smart objects cad progs like Revit, ADT or Archicad should be able to print sections as solid color fill. Am I right here?

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...first post ever to cgarch I think...cool portal... ...makin' me want to be a cg artist which I ain't.

 

I've found a unique (secret) way to add color to an AutoCAD drawing using Flash. It's quick and easy but there is a limitation - no line thicknesses from AutoCAD. The cool thing is that it's not a bitmap. It retains some of it's raster properties and adding color under the CAD file works great.

Any interest in this?

If so here's how; in AutoCAD it's the command 'wmfout'. First you need to prepare the drawing in AutoCAD. To create a traditional black-line-on-white-paper drawing change the background color to white and the all lines to black. Then type wmfout, select all the entities and save it as file. Then import the wmf file into Flash. In Flash put the wmf file on a separate layer and lock it. Create a new layer underneath the AutoCAD layer. Add color using the easy Flash drawing tools. It's pretty cool and can be exported at highres. Works with Word and Freehand too.

Hope that all makes sense to someone out there.

...probably too long a post...i'll work on that...

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...first post ever to cgarch I think...cool portal... ...makin' me want to be a cg artist which I ain't.

 

I've found a unique (secret) way to add color to an AutoCAD drawing using Flash. It's quick and easy but there is a limitation - no line thicknesses from AutoCAD. The cool thing is that it's not a bitmap. It retains some of it's raster properties and adding color under the CAD file works great.

Any interest in this?

If so here's how; in AutoCAD it's the command 'wmfout'. First you need to prepare the drawing in AutoCAD. To create a traditional black-line-on-white-paper drawing change the background color to white and the all lines to black. Then type wmfout, select all the entities and save it as file. Then import the wmf file into Flash. In Flash put the wmf file on a separate layer and lock it. Create a new layer underneath the AutoCAD layer. Add color using the easy Flash drawing tools. It's pretty cool and can be exported at highres. Works with Word and Freehand too.

Hope that all makes sense to someone out there.

...probably too long a post...i'll work on that...

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