Topic Title

I have been looking for a fast way to quickly add color to elevations and plans and I'm wondering what strategies other users have found. I use Sketchup, Photoshop, 3Ds max and even O2c once in a while, but these programs all require modeling or organizational efforts beyond what I want in preliminary sketches. What I'm looking for is quick and dirty color slapping with the ability for a few cheap effects.

I have been looking for, but not yet found, a plug in for DataCad similar to M-Color, or a program that at least recognizes the.aec file format. Piranesi looks promising, but it seems I would have to make several file conversions to get there. Has anyone had success with this from DCAD?

Within DataCad itself I have had mixed success with custom SPB fills which really crank a modest drawing to an impressive size quickly, and closely spaced color hatches which appear to work well, but have no flexibility for anything other than solid looking colors. At this point in my office the marker is still mightier than the mouse in this department. Damn I hate the smell of Xylene, give me burning toner!

Ah, excuse my outburst -
I'd love to hear some fresh ideas or options of where to go/what to try next; or even better that DC12 will add a lot of improvements to the 2D drawing arena instead of reinventing the BIM wheel.

Hi Toby,

A while back I had asked about rendering 2D-Elevations as well. I hope some of the people that responded to me will also respond back to you. Neil had some really nice examples of 2D Rendered Elevations.

What I found is that using SPB Fill is fairly quick & easy. I would really like the ability to add material like qualities such as glass/glazing to 2D Elevation views. I'll have to experiment more with BMP images of brick, siding, etc. used as a fill. I'm not sure what control I'll have using images as far as size of siding exposure or sizing of CMU units.

Maybe Neil and others can post some examples along with a description of how they created Rendered Elevations.

Good Luck,

Giuseppe

I interesting that this subject came up. We have run into some other problems related to coloer rendering.
1-Screen color matching to printer, either on site of off
2-printer profiles that match your SRGB, CYNK or RGB coloring
3- real color matching with textures and reflections
I have to go back and forth from printer to screen to p[rinter to get the final color I want. A REAL pain. The screen must be color calibrated to get a true printer color with a profile.

We are investigating Photoshop after several local probings. The Datacad fills are OK as a start but if you are striving for top shelf color and quality add on programs will need to be the direction.
If ther are any others out there that have had similar problems let us know.

I use PS Elements, which is inexpensive, as use a modified marker or watercolor-wash surrogate to create quick .pdf's in color. It does take a bit of time getting used to the mouse as the marker/brush; but you can get linked-packages of a 4x6 graphics tablet/stylus that come with a copy of PS Elements for almost what you pay for PS Elements from Photoshop.

One advantage is with a .pdf is you have both a record of the rendering (always nice to have for future re-use), and the ability to make copies or send them via e-mail without scanning.

Hello,

Here's a link to that other thread:

http://forum.datacad.com/viewtopic.php?t=2537

You can always add a bitmap or two behind the elevation, to add more "oomph" if you need to.

Thanks for the link to the othe thread, Neil, those are some nice examples of bitmap renderings in DataCad, and probably the best that can be squeezed out of the program without taking the next step to having an accurate 3-d model.

Ted, thank you so much for justifying the purchase of a tablet. Now that I have validation I'm going to get right on that. If anyone wants to give me, well, pretty much any reason for purchasing a 64-bit computer I'm
just dying to start shopping for that as well.

jlm, sounds like you might have some fun shopping for hardware, may I suggest Colorvisions Spyder2 to help calibrate your screen and printer?

Since posting a couple of days ago, I'm almost achieving my goal by using Sketchup. I've been importing 2d elevations, draping them onto planes and using Rubys to close any undefined spaces. Then I can use the all powerful paint bucket to drop materials and colors and send to photoshop for a couple sketchy effects. Only problem so far is that I will have a lot of undefined spaces due to lines not meeting by a tiny amount. I'm a drafting accuracy freak so I'm not sure where these gaps are coming from, but my guess is that it's due to sketchup not having the sixteen point precision of DataCad.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep trying to break my Xylene addiction.

Piranesi looks promising, but it seems I would have to make several file conversions to get there. Has anyone had success with this from DCAD?

I don't think Piranesi is what you are looking for, but it works simply enough with DataCad. The DCad model is loaded into Vedute and then passed on to Piranesi. The lighting and viewing position is done in Vedute.

I recently discovered Autodesk Impression which provides exactly the features I was looking for. It is quite fun and straightforward to use and gives the quick sketchy last minute effects I wanted. Functionality is limited in working with DataCad .dwg exports, but it still provides good tools and results. It's in Beta right now so it is free to download and experiment with. Check it out at:

http://labs.autodesk.com/Impressionlanding.aspx

Cheers!