I’m planning on doing a house remodel. I’m a recent Sketchup convert and it’s an absolutely amazing application. It appears that it is not well suited for actual construction drawings. I’m looking for inexpensive CAD applications that will serve this purpose. I’m looking at Autodsys’s Intellicad 6 Standard for $149.
Does anyone have any recommendations for architectural CAD software? Is TurboCAD Designer for $39.95 any good? I don’t need anything too awesome, just good enough to please the local planning commission. The ability to import from Sketchup is pretty important, but not absolutely necessary.
I’m leaning towards Intellicad for Autocad compatablilty and the fact that it’s from an open source consortium. I’m just pissed that they don’t give it away for free anymore.
Why do you say that? Have you spent any time over at the SketchUp community Message Board? You might want to poke around there and ask folks what they think. Still, you’ll have to fork over $500 for the Pro version if you want to be able to print out usable drawings.
I’ve used FastCad and EasyCad (by Evolution Computing) for years. The software is much cleaner and more straightforward and consistent in its use than AutoCad is. I think they have a 2D system for maybe $95. It is not specifically for architecture (I don’t know what that would entail, either). But it’s very nice software. If I lost access to it at work, I’d buy my own copy in a heartbeat.
I dunno. I was screwing around with it and the leap from doing 3D modeling to actual construction drawings seemed nearly insurmountable. It appears that text will stay at screen size no matter what the scale of the drawing is. They also seem to stay upright and and perpendicular to the viewer line of sight, regardless of the model It appears that line thicknesses are somewhat global or constrained to material types.
Looking closer at the Sketchup site, it appears that I may just have to suck down the $495 for the Pro version. It appears that the Layout application in SU Pro may have the necessary capabilities. I’ll download the Pro version and check it out, although it’s more than I wanted to spend.
I had seen many people talk about using separate CAD programs for construction drawings. A couple of examples:
In the greater scheme of things, I suppose the $495 is relatively nominal compared to the cost of the remodel. I’m just not sure I’m going to use it a lot. I just hope I can figure it out in the 8 hours that the trial version of Sketchup Pro allows.
Is this a one-time thing? Is 30 days long enough for you?
As recent threads will show, I know next to nothing about CAD software, but I DO know that you can go to the Autodesk website and get a free 30-day trial of Civil 3D with AutoCAD 2008. I presume you can try other versions as well. I have no clue if this will suit your purpose, though!
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve actually located a freeware version of Intellicad called ProgeCAD 2008 Smart! Download here, for any one who is interested. I’ve already bought a Dummies book on Autocad, so I’ll see if I can make heads or tails out of it. It certainly looks daunting at first glance.
You can set the font size to be fixed, and to scale with the drawing. Right click on the text, and select “entity info”. Click on “change font” and activate “height” instead of “points”. Then set the height to what works (I usually set it to 8").
You can overcome that in LayOut, which you get when buy the Pro package.
Again, you can fix that in LayOut.
You get 8 hours free trial. Do as much as you can in the free version first.
If you’re working on drawings, just use top view and don’t have perspective on-- that just makes it harder to work with.
I have no idea what you, your SO, or your friends do for a living, but my professor got us all free Sketchup Pro- Google’s just dying to give this stuff out to academics for some reason.