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blair
Joined: 20 Jul 2004
Posts: 7
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 Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2004 8:53 pm Post subject: DesignWorks - Others |
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| Thinking about buying the latest version of DesignWorks but I am wondering! Has anyone ever used a program called SketchUp. If so, what does it have to offer that DesignWorks does not? Is SketchUp a program that you also have in your toolbox to use for specific purposes and if so what are those specific purpose. One thing I am trying to determine is whether or not it might be of value to purchase both programs and how each might be used in conjunction with CAD programs such as AutoCAD, ArchiCAD, Chief, SoftPlan etc. At the SketchUp website I also see some fine work and a lot of folks there also use a program called Artlantis and another program called Piranesi (which is mentioned here) in conjunction with Design WorkShop. There are so many good programs around and it is hard to figure out which are the best MUST HAVES. If one uses DesignWorks what do other programs such as Lightwave/Light... have to offer? What are the top 5 programs that the PRO's use? |
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F700ES
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 109
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:08 am Post subject: Re: DesignWorks - Others |
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| blair wrote: | | Thinking about buying the latest version of DesignWorks but I am wondering! Has anyone ever used a program called SketchUp. If so, what does it have to offer that DesignWorks does not? Is SketchUp a program that you also have in your toolbox to use for specific purposes and if so what are those specific purpose. One thing I am trying to determine is whether or not it might be of value to purchase both programs and how each might be used in conjunction with CAD programs such as AutoCAD, ArchiCAD, Chief, SoftPlan etc. At the SketchUp website I also see some fine work and a lot of folks there also use a program called Artlantis and another program called Piranesi (which is mentioned here) in conjunction with Design WorkShop. There are so many good programs around and it is hard to figure out which are the best MUST HAVES. If one uses DesignWorks what do other programs such as Lightwave/Light... have to offer? What are the top 5 programs that the PRO's use? |
Hello Blair, I have SU and it is just about the easiest 3D application to use out there. I tried the DW Lite version and found it to be just about useless. The user interface is horrid. I use SU along with other CAD apps like AutoCAD and Viz Render and it works very well with them. Now if SU only had a better renderer built in but that might take away it's simplistic approach. Download the 8 hour demo and watch the video tutorials and see for yourself. Good luck  |
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Rick65000
Joined: 17 May 2004
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:33 am Post subject: Strata 3D CX |
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I've noticed a software called Strata CD CX in theMacConnection catalogs.
I have been using DWClassic to make models then bring the lines into Illustrator via PICT export. It kind of sucks, but DWC was only $115.00. I bought it when I was still using OS 9.
Strata offers live linking to Adobe files.
How does it compare with Setch Update? I notice Strata costs a little more than SU. And SU says it can exchange data with other software but it doesn't mention the live linking to Adobe files, but they seem to imply the live linking is only with Photoshop.
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Surprisingly tedious at times. |
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Kevin
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 1075
Location: Eugene, Oregon
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| Posted: Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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I wouldn't necessarily jump in to this discussion, but that sour posting from an AutoCAD user (above) just seemed to beg for a response... so here goes...
Posted by Kafka in another forum here:
See the DesignWorkshop User Gallery, for what DW users of all kinds and levels have created:
http://www.designcommunity.com/user_gallery.html
Check out some more real DW user comments, along the left hand side here:
http://www.artifice.com/dw.html
and continuing on this page:
http://www.artifice.com/dw/dw_comments.html
Yes, of course it's true that what one major magazine called "the most direct 3D interface short of a data glove", and another major magazine called "...a beautifully designed program", is not quite for everybody. But for architectural designers, there's really nothing else like it. And with DesignWorkshop Lite, you can give it a good run for free, both for Windows, and Mac Classic:
http://www.artifice.com/free/dw_lite.html
So, good luck with your search! |
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F700ES
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 109
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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Kevin, I am sorry if I came off "sour" but he asked for opinions and I gave one. Sure I use AutoCAD but I also use other apps as well. I found DW to be useless but other may not. Sorry if I touched off a nerve but it was not my intent just expressing my opinion, nothing more. He should by all means try it to see. I tried it and did not like it, hey different strokes for different folks you know Again sorry if I rubbed you or anyone else the wrong
Cheers |
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lavardera
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 412
Location: merchantville, nj
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| Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:54 am Post subject: |
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check out the Gallery of www.pushpullbar.com for a good idea of what Sketchup can do. I find DW's interface polarizing - it never clicked for me. I find SU's interface very neutral and that is "gets out of my way" when I am working. If you want to cite praise from the press, and industry awards for that matter, SU has garnered much. I don't really know what a data glove anymore, but I remember promise of such devices not 10 years ago that seem to not have come to pass. It dates the praise of DW I'm afraid. It was outrageously ahead of its time when it was new.
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greg |
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Kevin
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 1075
Location: Eugene, Oregon
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:19 am Post subject: |
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| lavardera wrote: | | It was outrageously ahead of its time when it was new. |
At which time, as I seem to recall, you were a proponent of UpFront, which used, like its intellectual successor SketchUp, an interface oriented toward edges and faces, drawing in 3D, rather than solids and voids, modeling in 3D. For your retroactive acknowledgement of the advances shown in DesignWorkshop, thanks.
But I can't accept your persective on virtual reality. Recent high-end graphics history has shown that direct-manipulation virtual reality applications have not found enough market to drive down price points for data gloves, stereoscopic viewing and other such advanced hardware to a level that would support broad adoption.
Although it still hasn't reached a mass market, and the more everyday kind of press coverage that would go along, advanced virtual reality (including data gloves) is still a very important area of research and advanced application, in areas that can afford it. See for instance: "Whatever Happened to Virtual Reality?", Copyright 2004 by Edward Willett, http://www.edwardwillett.com/Columns/virtualreality2004.htm (and http://edwardwillett.blogspot.com/2004/06/whatever-happened-to-virtual-reality.html)
| Willett wrote: | Unfortunately, the dreams of what might someday be possible exceeded the capabilities of the available technology. VR helmets and their optics were too heavy. Computers were too slow. Datagloves were too heavy, making it tiring to hold your hand in front of you for a long period of time. ... But today, VR helmets and optics are lighter and produce a more immersive experience. Computers are thousands of times more powerful. We can even simulate touch, through "haptics," which uses small motors in gloves and other devices...
In Northern Island VR is being used to help stroke patients regain the use of their arms and hands. Wearing a VR headset and dataglove, patients can practice making a cup of tea in a virtual kitchen or taking groceries off the shelves of a virtual store...
Whatever happened to virtual reality? Nothing. In fact, virtual reality is happening to us--and as technology advances, it’s going to be happening more and more. |
Which brings us back to the advantage of DesignWorkshop, today, in providing an advanced live 3D volumetric direct-manipulation interface, desktop virtual reality for architectural design, without requiring any of that specialized interface hardware.
If it works for you, then enjoy and be creatively productive, like thousands of other happy users. If it's not your style, then by all means, please use something else! With DesignWorkshop Lite free 3D, the tool is free to find out for yourself. Let your imagination soar! |
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lavardera
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 412
Location: merchantville, nj
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 7:47 am Post subject: |
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Kevin, I have always tried to acknowledge DW although I admit it is always in the context of my own preferences. I was a big proponent of upfront, and I remember at one point when they had gone under emailing Kevin to suggest that perhaps DW could purchase or adopt the upFront 3d interface now that they had thrown in the towel. At that point I learned from you that the DW interface, which drove me away from the product, was its most salient point and the result of much academic study on your part! Oh well, open mouth, insert foot.
I find the distinction between solid modeling and surface modeling irrelevant for what I do. Industrial designers and those that conceive objects of essentially solid material have a real procedural need to be modeling in solids. The focus is on the making of the object, and often the computer model goes directly into production. If the focus is on creating spaces, or I should say representations of spaces, - solids or surfaces - what does it matter. The creative process? Manipulating a solid element is superior to manipulating a surface element when designing in 3d? The paradigm of drawing a line in 3d is problematic because it refers to a 2d process? For me this comes dangerously close to pandering to vanities about 3d work and has little relevance to the use of a tool to design.
I don't expect Kevin to feel any differently - he must believe in what he has created and I respect that. I have no formal interests in the success of Sketchup beyond seeing it thrive and improve via gaining more users, as that will improve its utility to me - no more upFronts if I can.
As far as the data glove reference, I only mean to say that it was promised to architects as the coming thing, and for whatever reason did not arrive, and so reference to it puts the quote in the context of years past. Its good praise, but old praise.
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greg |
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Kevin
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 1075
Location: Eugene, Oregon
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 11:09 am Post subject: |
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| laverdera wrote: | | he must believe in what he has created and I respect that. |
This gets to the continuing problem with your competitive, judgemental attitude about DesignWorkshop for the last decade. It is a bit subtle, but annoyingly dogged and contentious.
Your comment quoted implies that that I beleive in the DesignWorkshop user interface because it is my creation. Whether or not you consciously meant it, that is a put-down, which does not give respect for the value of the tool in and of it itself.
In your repeated mealy-mouthed attacks on DesignWorkshop over the years, in our own forums, no less, where one of your favorite applications has recieved years of dedicated free support, you tend to talk directly of the benefits you percieve of in the competing applications you like - while personalizing what would be the corresponding aspects of DesignWorkshop.
How would you like it, if one of your main competitors took station in the local pub that was next door to your design office, and every time you went in there and started discussing your projects, the competitor would butt in, and talk you down? Not just making his point, and then listening, but hanging on bitterly to get the last word time after time?
If you want to engage in a sincerely respectful, gentlepersonly discussion of facts and ideas and attitudes, to teach and to learn each in turn, and both in good measure, then you've come to the right place. Pull up a stool and have a pint. But if you prefer instead to personalize and ridicule, then feel free to take your "pandering" and "vanities", and go somewhere else.
After going-on ten years of that, I'm pretty damn tired of it. As I said above, there's nothing wrong with liking another 3D modeling software. We support and encourage and approve of open discussion among differeing points of view. But there is something wrong in how and where and when you go about expressing your different liking.
As for surface versus volumetric attitudes toward architectural design, how can I say this? Architecture is volumetric. Space is volume, not surface. And sophisticated design deals with the figure-ground relationship - not just the open spaces in a building, but also the solid volumes (the structural and service spaces behind the surfaces).
In the real physical world, everything is ultimately volumetric. Lines and surfaces, in contrast, and mathematical abstractions that do not exist physically.
At the level of CAD tool design, philosophy, and theory, there is a truly fundamental distinction between a "modeling" approach, and a "drawing" approach, whether in 2D or 3D. In some application areas, the distinction directly impacts what an application can readily accomplish. In other areas, the distinction is more a matter of style and attitude, resolvable by personal preference (which can hardly be argued!)
Since light interacts only with the surfaces of most objects (or passes through, if they are transparent), computer graphics rendering, which is ultimately the modeling of light in space, does in fact only deal with surfaces. So the distinction between a 3D modeling approach and a 3D drawing approach does not appear in rendered output. What this distinction does impact is the creative process.
If the 3D drawing approach of UpFront and SketchUp works for your application areas and design attitudes, and fits your preferences better, then please, enjoy! Really! But don't go and ridicule the ultimately deeper concept of feature-based 3D modeling which lies behind tools like Revit and DesignWorkshop.
Somehow the tactics of argument applied make me think of a bumper sticker that happens to be on someone's car outside, quoting Schopenhauer:
| Quote: | All truth passes through 3 stages...
1st - It is ridiculed
2nd - It is violently opposed
3rd - It is accepted as being self-evident. |
Too often true! But around here, we try to do better.
Last edited by Kevin on Mon Jul 26, 2004 3:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lavardera
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 412
Location: merchantville, nj
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2004 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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I apologize.
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greg |
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