Also in the October issue of CADENCE
Issue Focus
1998's Best AutoCAD R14 Tips and
Tricks
George Head
SPECIAL REPORT: CADENCE LAB
In Search of Budget-Friendly
21-inch CAD-Ready Monitors
Guy Wright
SPECIAL REPORT: CADENCE LAB
Pentium II 400 MHz Workstations
Make Their Debut
Peter K. Sheerin
CADENCE betaview
AutoCAD Architectural Desktop
Geoffrey Moore Langdon
CAD OPTIONS
IronCAD
Joe Greco
Trial Runs
Referentia for AutoCAD:
3D Design & Drawing in R14 by David Pitzer
Arnie Williams
Iomega jaz 2GB Drive
David V. Sherrill
FlowTools with Intelligent
Symbols Version 2.0b
William Klawitter
Circles and Lines
Creating Your Own Toolbars (For the
Technically Challenged!)
Lynn Allen
Third Dimension
What's Your Perspective?
John Wilson
The Support Column
LT 97, Evaluator 6.0 and Bonus Toolbars
Peter Sheerin
Manager's VPOINT
Become a Better CAD Manager
Robert Green
CADENCE CHANNEL: Feature Review AutoCAD ArchitecturalDesktop October 1998
Also see new review of AutoCAD ArchitecturalDesktop2 - May 2000
Geoffrey Moore Langdon
AutoCAD Architectural Desktop
It's not just your drafter's AutoCAD anymore. With AutoCAD Architectural Desktop, the idea of architects relying solely on plain vanilla AutoCAD becomes less compelling when you see what a discipline-specific collective product can do.
CADENCE Verdict
AutoCAD Architectural Desktop offers intelligent comprehensive 3D models and semiautomatic creation of plans, sections, elevations and details. Pros: Easy and automatic real 3D with instant perspectives; automatic sections and elevations that update upon request; powerful stair generator; complex roofscape creation; dynamically changeable walls, doors and windows. Cons: No automatic way of dealing with multiple floors or stories; sections generation features are confusing; not directly compatible with multilines, AutoCAD ACIS 3D models; photorealistic rendering is usually done in 3D Studio VIZ or 3D Studio MAX. Price: (Initial pricing) $4,395 for full system; $695 upgrade from AutoCAD R14; $895 upgrade from R11-13; $195 upgrade from Softdesk 8 AEC products. Autodesk, Inc. Shipping software may vary from what is shown here. |
This shift to parametrics is still being debated among architects, with many defending the old 2D polyline/offset/trim way of using CAD as an electronic pencil vs. those who argue that parametric 3D spatial models are inevitable since they most closely resemble what architects do when they design. Some fear that 3D CAD models are too inexact or show too much or take too long to develop to be practical on a real project. AutoCAD Architectural Desktop addresses the problem of a 3D model showing too much or too little information with a revolutionary display system that automatically blots out unneeded detail showing elements differently in plan, section or perspective views.
Architectural Desktop also debunks the myth that 3D takes too much time. With it you can generate a coordinated total set of accurate construction documents much faster than with the traditional AutoCAD R14 approach of 2D polylines and offsets. This is not your drafter's AutoCAD anymore; rather it's a designer's AutoCAD that introduces a number of useful tools that pertain throughout the life of a design project.
The software consists of three main parts, with a pulldown menu and toolbar for each, concentrating on the principal phases of architectural design.
- Concept-space planning, conceptual 3D model massing, and automatic
wall, section and elevation generation;
- Design-intelligent and parametrically changeable walls, windows, doors, stairs, roofs and symbol libraries;
- Documentation-annotation and automatic schedule generation tools; and, essentially, AutoCAD R14.
Not an Add-On Template
When you install AutoCAD Architectural Desktop, even if you upgraded from
AutoCAD R14, an entirely new program is installed. The Desktop is much more
tightly integrated than any previous third-party add-ons have been. Underneath
it all is a full AutoCAD R14.01, to which you can indeed add other AutoCAD
overlays if desired. An immediately noticeable benefit is that there are
no Move Door or Copy Window type commands. Instead, all the regular AutoCAD
editing commands such as MOVE, COPY, MIRROR, STRETCH, ERASE, ARRAY and so
on work perfectly and as expected with the new architecturally intelligent
elements. For example, as you move a door, it will automatically latch to
and orient itself to any walls you drag the cursor over.
The core of the new intelligent features in Architectural Desktop are in the Design menu. Utilizing these tools, a designer will easily build (rather than draw) a building out of walls, roofs and floors in plan or axonometric views (or both), popping in windows and doors that automatically display correctly in any view. As you include other elements, appropriately named layers are added automatically-for example, A-door, A-wall, A-mass-slce. Another key value is that for the first time many architectural symbols come with the software, a few of which are in 3D, such as furniture, trees, section markers and graphic elements such as north arrows.
Many unique and helpful architectural ideas are built into Architectural Desktop. Masking, for instance, allows a 2x4 lighting fixture block to blot out the unneeded line in a 2x2 ceiling grid without erasing it, making any subsequent changes easier. Anchors allow joining railings to stairs, columns to column grids, windows to walls and so on, while Layout Curves goes even further, providing the ability to designate that a certain element will occur every 4 feet along a wall and then have the element automatically adjust as the design changes. Multiple roofs can be merged, creating very sophisticated roofs.
Another general plus is that the AutoCAD Architectural Desktop installation comes with new AEC Bonus Tools loaded onto the pulldown menu as well as on toolbars, since several of the layer-specific tools, such as Layer Manager, are so important to architectural work.
Concept
The Concept menu includes a number of different 2D and 3D schematic design
tools. A designer can bounce back and forth between a 2D space planner that
shows rooms and square footages (which can be restricted) and a 3D solid
modeler to create and dynamically view volumetric mass element shapes that
can be sliced into what will become floorplans or sections.
AutoCAD Architectural Desktop and Compatibility When you transfer a DWG file created in AutoCAD Architectural Desktop to others who do not have the program, what do they get? They will likely see what appears to be unmodifiable blocks. If they have AutoCAD R14, they can download a small free program called the Object Enabler from the Autodesk Web site. This will let them see the intelligent objects as they are meant to be and get any other information specific to the AutoCAD Architectural Desktop drawing. Those using R12, R13 or non-Autodesk products, will get either 2D lines or 3D faces, depending on how the file was saved in Desktop. Softdesk 8 AutoArchitect users will be able to open their AutoCAD Architectural Desktop files and use a mix of AutoArchitect and Architectural Desktop elements, make use of layer tools and so on. However, the two programs handle walls, windows, doors, and roofs entirely differently, so those elements cannot be converted (that is, you cannot place an Architectural Desktop window into an AutoArchitect wall, or vice versa). Similarly, the ACIS 3D modeler of AutoCAD R14 is not compatible with Architectural Desktop 3D solid-mass elements nor is a converter planned. For doing architecture, the new mass element solid modeler is, in the long run, much more powerful, since elements are parametrically changeable and hierarchically linkable. |
Modeling this way can be quite fun, since you can start a cube in a plan view, and then dynamically set its size and height in an axonometric view, all without typing anything. For example, Gable creates a dynamically changeable mass element that starts out looking like a Monopoly house and is great for modeling different kinds of roofs just by varying the parameters.
One criticism is that mass elements (such as AutoCAD R14 rectangles) do not display the dimensions while drawing them as one would need and expect while truly doing conceptual modeling. This contrasts with the Wall tool in the Design module, which is indeed helpful with a running wall length in the special onscreen control box. You can type sizes beforehand into the control box, but this is much more awkward. Also, there is no polygon (six- or eight-sided) mass element primitive, nor is there directly a polyline extruded mass element. To get a swept polyline such as is shown as a curved mass wall in the tutorial, and to extrude or revolve other shapes for things such as custom stair handrails, a designer must define a Profile primitive in another area of the software. Whether this extra step is a drawback or a potential feature remains to be seen.
We also found that subtractive Boolean operations on the mass elements was sometimes very temperamental and had a lot to do with the order in which you added them to the mass grouping. From these mass groups you can automatically generate space plans that can in turn generate finished walls; however, generating different floorplans requires a somewhat involved process of Slice/Generate/Attach/(change layers)/Blocking and Boundaries/Convert to Boundary/ Convert from Slice/ Space/Generate Walls-a myriad of selections to be made, even after setting the heights (say 9 feet) of the floor slices. It would be nice to have a menu choice that would automatically take the most usual settings and just do it.
Similarly, the software can create sections from a selected cut line, but the result is so flexible (it generates a whole sectioned-model that you then need to set the view for) that it becomes confusing. Again it would be nice to just have it assume you want to view a traditional type section.
One of the niftiest features of the Concept menu is the Model Explorer, which is an extraordinarily fast, easy, virtual-reality like viewer for your design in progress. It is sometimes disorienting (frequently your design flips upside down as with many VR applications), it has perspective as an optional choice, but still shows an axonometric, and only works with Mass Groups, not with symbols in the symbol manager or with walls and roofs from the Design menu (there is the similar Object Viewer for that). Still it is a welcome way to visualize while designing.
Design
In the Design menu you can select and plunk down generic walls and pop in windows and doors, and later, as you determine exact construction, you can choose a particular composite wall and everything will automatically adjust and clean up. This is how architects have long wished CAD would work. The Walls virtually always clean up automatically and so well-even very complex intersections-that there are no tools to adjust any wall intersections that may be troublesome (so you may need to add or stretch a wall occasionally). The walls even have smart priorities, with a wood stud wall breaking as it crosses a masonry wall. Window/Door placing is excellent, automatically orienting and snapping into appropriate walls as you move the cursor over them.
In virtually all cases, the regular Move/Copy/Mirror/Stretch/Erase commands of AutoCAD work on the architectural elements in an intuitive way. You can also use the Array command on windows and doors, but only from left to right.
Hints for Fine-Tuning AutoCAD Architectural Desktop General-Make a prototype template drawing with two views (plan and axonometric) similar to the demonstration drawings and import into it all the Wall/Window/and Door styles from the demo4 drawing file (as only the "Standard" of each of these architectural elements will show up after installing the software). Seeing the axonometric at the same time helps you select and move elements and see the end product. Quite a number of templates ship with the software, each set up specifically for various phases of design. Streamlining Snap-Turn snap to node; otherwise, the numerous potential snap points in a typical model bring AutoCAD to its knees, slowing up the machine to a virtual lockup. Hang Onto Boundaries-Boundaries are the key to AutoCAD Architectural Desktop and should be used as conceptual level walls well into the design development phase as long as possible. If you do so, then you can go back and forth between spaces (which show areas and designate specific rooms) and boundaries (which will generate walls or go back to generating new 3D solid mass elements). Thus you generate Walls only when the design is pretty well defined. Redlining Sections-We suggest turning section lines to red so that the cut-through elements in the resulting 3D model section show up clearly. Toolbars to the Max-Turn on the extra 20 toolbars of architectural tools by selecting AECARCHX in the View/Toolbars menu. |
The automatic Stair macro is probably the best one in the industry-it will automatically flex and snake around to fit a space as you draw or modify it, automatically adding or subtracting needed steps dynamically as you stretch other parts of the stairs, all with detailed handrails and balusters, even in perspective or axonometric. This is how a designer wants to have CAD help to design stairs.
Automatically generated Sections and Elevations are live connections to the comprehensive model and are designed to be able to accommodate xrefs. Thus, many different people can be working on different xref floorplans across a network and the section generator will automatically go out and retrieve all that relevant information and update those sections whenever you right click it and ask for an update-a very nice feature indeed. Actually setting up those sections, however, can be confusing, as you are given a number of choices of what kind of projection you wish to generate.
Where Are Stories/Levels?
In general, we are impressed by most all of these new architectural features
within AutoCAD Architectural Desktop. In this beta version, however, a couple
of rough spots call out for improvement. Most importantly is the lack of
built-in tools to handle Floors/Stories/Levels elegantly. For now, you'll
have to deal with this issue creatively, as all the different floor stories
of walls end up on the same layer (A-wall) and all the windows on another
layer and so on. The Architectural Desktop technical product manager suggests
manually adding floor numbers to the end of layer names and using the Layer
Manager or Viewer to switch between floors as sets of layers, or splitting
up the floors into different external reference files. Any of these approaches
requires a good deal of prior organization and adherence to whatever standard
a given office decides upon.
Speaking of floors, we are wondering where floor slabs are as an entity? Since the intelligence and parametrics of walls is built with the new ObjectARX for AEC technology, they are not compatible with walls created in AutoArchitect, PalladioX, ArchT or AutoCAD's Multiline.
Section lines, Camera icons, Mass Group icons and Slice icons all show up in the 3D views looking like strange garden elements. Presumably this makes it easy to select these icons while working in an axonometric view; however, they usually are on the same layer as the drawing elements they control. There is a way to turn these things off somewhere, but it is currently in too obscure a place to find.
Door size doesn't change when picking other styles. For example, going from an 8 foot slider to a single hinge door leaves the size at 8 feet instead of switching to 3 feet or some other size.
Documentation
Much of what used to be Softdesk 8 AutoArchitect ended up in the documentation
module of Architectural Desktop, including the Symbol Manager, schedule
generator, layer keying, annotation and AEC Tools. All are excellent tools
and help put finishing touches on construction documents.
There is also a detail manager, very similar to the Vertex Detailer in AutoArchitect, which allows details to be built by plunking down architectural pieces from the symbol library (2x6, anchor bolt, flashing and so on) in a far faster, more accurate way than trying to draw them line by line. There are also toolbars for intelligent parametric column and ceiling grids, as well as Bill of Materials. Additionally, there are a number of tools, such as the LayerManager, and Viewport Display in the Bonus toolbar, as well as many pre-set-up template files with Paper Space drawing layouts, all of which help get that production drawing set done.
Support
The separate AutoCAD Architectural Desktop Learning Assistance CD-ROM that
will ship with the product sports some 36 tutorials that can be explored
in any order and provide an excellent self-paced learning tool. Support
is also provided with the context-sensitive onscreen Help feature and via
the extensive Autodesk Web site devoted to Architectural Desktop.
Conclusions
AutoCAD Architectural Desktop is the architect's AutoCAD. Those in the profession
who are currently using plain vanilla AutoCAD, whether R12, R13 or R14,
should upgrade to Architectural Desktop, even if they only use one portion
of this software-a production person just using the intelligent walls, a
principal just using the conceptual 3D mass elements or space planner, a
detailer just using the parts library. When you figure that others in the
design firm could be adding intelligent elements with AutoCAD Architectural
Desktop that you could work with for other purposes, you end up with a nicely
integrated tool appropriate for all aspects of architecture.
Geoffrey Moore Langdon is a registered architect in New York state and is the principal of Architectural CADD Consultants. He has taught design, solar energy and architectural CAD in a number of colleges in the Boston area. A guest speaker at many events, Professor Langdon is also the founder and organizer of the Designers 3D CAD Shootout competition. Reach him at glangdon@architecturalcadd.com.
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