ideapete
12-07-2007, 06:41
One of the major topics that keeps coming up is how does a team carry out project collaboration involving CAD or multidimensional 3D design drawings with people who do not have access either willingly or unwillingly to the software or hardware needed to view the design files.
The primary way to do this in the past and still currently was to create a rendered or modified 2D view of the parts of the project then embed these with a graphics file either gif or jpg then include these into a text document ( word / pdf / web ) describing the images. Most clients we have worked with do not like the render approach because frankly its an artists perception taking full advantage of color and light palettes to dress up the project and in fact bears very little resemblance to the finished product. It is in a word 2 dimensional unrealistic a very good marketing tool but a not very honest project tool. Many people involved in projects for feedback are non technical and embarrassed to tell one and all that they cannot comprehend 2 dimensional layouts especially with infrastructure and terrain plan views and as a result provide misguided input to the project. Famous scenes repeated every day on a construction site with several people standing around a huge roll of drawings making poses remenisant of Rembrandt's thinker, albeit confused ones. Also the primary method to transfer data and get feedback these days is electronic which have lots of traps whether by email file size and recipients hardware such as PDAs
The current file wars between Autodesk and Adobe are aimed at one thing and one thing only controlling the market regardless of how difficult it makes for the individual users of a project
Let me illustrate with a recent usability ( really finding out how people use their technology ) exercise.
We recently asked our clients and the people who prepare most of our technical documents for some feedback on what type of images they would most like to see in all the project correspondence and they where pretty unanimous 3d emended into the normal document where the client could rotate and create simple manipulation without affecting the models integrity. They flat out did not want access to a model viewer or software that was separated from the communications document and simply stated we do not want to learn another program so that cuts out nifty options like Sketchup layout. Primarily for file tracking and a way for every participant to see the document flow. I think its high time that form a technology standpoint we stop bombarding people with the latest and greatest and simply give them the tool to do the job. Although its not a wonderfully liked program most of our systems use pdf format and so do many of our customers and so our first task without reinventing the wheel was to see if anything in 3d was available to do that.
Sure enough we came across two Adobe Acrobat 3d and Render plus 3D PDF. Like every test we started out with trial versions of the programs and soon found the difference. In Adobe we had to go through the usual hoops and jumps and registrations that took about an hour to finalize and then an ENORMOUS file and I do mean enormous 2gig application unfolded on our system. we had at the same time downloaded the renderplus version nice and compact no massive registration what is your dogs favorite one color nonsense like adobe and looked at this tiny 26 meg application with somewhat apprehension. The prices match the file size with Adobe at $1000 a seat and render at $189. While grappling with the huge Adobe install and burrowing through the instructions to convert a simple 3d we took rederplus for a whirl and quickly hit a wall with our skp file conversion. Thinking we had struck out and it was a Sunday we just sent render a not for prime time saucy email and we were totally staggered when Render plus tech support Al Hart responded withing a couple of hours with a send me the model and we will look at it. Eventually success dawned and got us into the home run position
Full thread here
http://forums.renderplus.com/showthread.php?p=1200
The primary way to do this in the past and still currently was to create a rendered or modified 2D view of the parts of the project then embed these with a graphics file either gif or jpg then include these into a text document ( word / pdf / web ) describing the images. Most clients we have worked with do not like the render approach because frankly its an artists perception taking full advantage of color and light palettes to dress up the project and in fact bears very little resemblance to the finished product. It is in a word 2 dimensional unrealistic a very good marketing tool but a not very honest project tool. Many people involved in projects for feedback are non technical and embarrassed to tell one and all that they cannot comprehend 2 dimensional layouts especially with infrastructure and terrain plan views and as a result provide misguided input to the project. Famous scenes repeated every day on a construction site with several people standing around a huge roll of drawings making poses remenisant of Rembrandt's thinker, albeit confused ones. Also the primary method to transfer data and get feedback these days is electronic which have lots of traps whether by email file size and recipients hardware such as PDAs
The current file wars between Autodesk and Adobe are aimed at one thing and one thing only controlling the market regardless of how difficult it makes for the individual users of a project
Let me illustrate with a recent usability ( really finding out how people use their technology ) exercise.
We recently asked our clients and the people who prepare most of our technical documents for some feedback on what type of images they would most like to see in all the project correspondence and they where pretty unanimous 3d emended into the normal document where the client could rotate and create simple manipulation without affecting the models integrity. They flat out did not want access to a model viewer or software that was separated from the communications document and simply stated we do not want to learn another program so that cuts out nifty options like Sketchup layout. Primarily for file tracking and a way for every participant to see the document flow. I think its high time that form a technology standpoint we stop bombarding people with the latest and greatest and simply give them the tool to do the job. Although its not a wonderfully liked program most of our systems use pdf format and so do many of our customers and so our first task without reinventing the wheel was to see if anything in 3d was available to do that.
Sure enough we came across two Adobe Acrobat 3d and Render plus 3D PDF. Like every test we started out with trial versions of the programs and soon found the difference. In Adobe we had to go through the usual hoops and jumps and registrations that took about an hour to finalize and then an ENORMOUS file and I do mean enormous 2gig application unfolded on our system. we had at the same time downloaded the renderplus version nice and compact no massive registration what is your dogs favorite one color nonsense like adobe and looked at this tiny 26 meg application with somewhat apprehension. The prices match the file size with Adobe at $1000 a seat and render at $189. While grappling with the huge Adobe install and burrowing through the instructions to convert a simple 3d we took rederplus for a whirl and quickly hit a wall with our skp file conversion. Thinking we had struck out and it was a Sunday we just sent render a not for prime time saucy email and we were totally staggered when Render plus tech support Al Hart responded withing a couple of hours with a send me the model and we will look at it. Eventually success dawned and got us into the home run position
Full thread here
http://forums.renderplus.com/showthread.php?p=1200