Architectural drawing software for dummies

[BryanC]

Equus said:

As it happens, I suspect that the OP's design ........ may well evolve in directions which Sketchup is NOT well suited for (organic forms and surface modelling), ..............he might save himself a lot of pain by ......... leaving the difficult and time consuming bit to the professionals.

Ah-ha ! Mission creep. Architects are used to the client adding '..by the way, can you just..' and groan inwardly.
Equus's advise is sound - leave it to the professionals.

[Equus]

BryanC said:

Equus said:

...may well evolve in directions which Sketchup is NOT well suited for (organic forms and surface modelling),...

Ah-ha ! Mission creep. Architects are used to the client adding '..by the way, can you just..' and groan inwardly.

I should stress that that's merely my speculation: the current design is fairly rectilinear and could be easily modelled in Sketchup... it's just that the basic concept is something to which organic forms would be well suited, so it's possible that ideas could evolve in that direction.

[plasticpig]

Equus said:

Yes, we use ProgeCAD - I used it at the TF manufacturer I worked for, and one of my current colleagues uses it instead of AutoCAD, because she's not a 'heavyweight' user like me, and because as you say, it's much, much cheaper.

It basically is AutoCAD in all but name, albeit usually one generation behind the current Autodesk product.

I'm sure that some of the code is actually copied from AutoCAD - it shares the same glitches on some commands, for example - but it's also a lot flakier generally, in our experience. Even AutoCAD isn't terribly robust, and crashes more often than is acceptable for modern software, but ProgeCAD crashes perhaps 5-10 times more frequently. But for the price, yes, it's fantastic value!

No code is copied from AutoCAD. ProgeCAD is based on IntelliCAD source code and the aim is to make it as closely compatible to AutoCAD as possible. So the behavior of commands is the same even if this might be undesirable.

[Equus]

plasticpig said:

....So the behavior of commands is the same even if this might be undesirable.

Hmm... to the point of crashing the program when you ask it to hatch the same shape that crashes AutoCAD?

Well, that's commendable attention to detail, i suppose!

The question remains as to whether IntelliCAD source code was genuinely written completely from scratch?

[plasticpig]

Equus said:

Hmm... to the point of crashing the program when you ask it to hatch the same shape that crashes AutoCAD?

Well, that's commendable attention to detail, i suppose!

The question remains as to whether IntelliCAD source code was genuinely written completely from scratch?

I believe so. The original IntelliCAD when it was released by Softdesk / Visio in the 90's used to crash all over the place where AutoCAD was stable. I would hazard that for some commercial uses it was probably unusable. Cheap option if you were developing applications for AutoCAD though. No need for the AutoLisp developers to hog an expensive licence...

[Equus]

plasticpig said:

The original IntelliCAD ... used to crash all over the place where AutoCAD was stable.

It still does, relatively speaking.

It's a lot better than it used to be, but the copy of ProgeCAD we bought (last year) is still as flaky as hell compared to genuine AutoCAD (and as I said, AutoCAD itself is actually pretty unstable compared to software like Sketchup and Photoshop, which can run for months on end without ever crashing).

Used to drive me nuts when I was using it intensively, professionally, as you either have to live with autosaves every few minutes (which slow things up in themselves) or regularly losing the last half hour's work when it freezes up for the 10th time that day. In my darker moments I did wonder whether IntelliCAD was secretly underwritten by Autodesk, to make you feel better when you finally bite the bullet on paying stupid money for software that actually works.

Still, for a £couple of hundred, and for light use, it's a bargain...

[cRaigAl205]

The practice I'm in have recently moved over to IntelliCAD as most of our houses (with oak frames) are designed in Sketchup, as it's about the most intuitive and efficient way to get a concept post-and-beam oak frame into the volumes before it goes into CAD-CAM software for production, and with a reasonable amount of perseverance you can get fairly attractive planning drawings out of it, so we only use AutoCAD occasionally and couldn't justify the cost of ongoing licenses.

IntelliCAD was very quickly affectionately (or not..) branded POS CAD (piece of sh*t) within the team, for the aforementioned reliability reasons. (Glad it's not just me that finds hatching things is the bane of my life.. )