Visual Styles in AutoCAD/Architectural Desktop

I was reading a post by Michael Scherotter on the MindManager Blog where he mentions how documents, including CAD drawings, can look too perfect, too “finished”, creating a barrier to participation.

People are reluctant to mess with something as they get the impression it’s complete. He’s even using a typeface created from his own handwriting, using a Tablet PC utility, to give typed MindManager maps a more human, loose feel although with a Tablet PC you can also “hand ink” a map.

Avoiding CAD precision is the reason AutoCAD/ADT 2007 visual styles will be useful for my work. CAD is great for dimensional integrity, you know things will fit, but that precision is not appropriate for presenting concept studies.

I created this video to demonstrate visual styles for a presentation at work. It uses an old drawing, created way back in ADT 3.3, so can share it here.

This is an early concept for a photo lab to establish the footprint required before we had much detail other than equipment sizes and service access areas (shown as red hatched AEC Spaces). It’s a mixture of AEC Objects (Walls, Curtain Walls, Slabs, Masses), AutoCAD Solids (the POS on the counter) and the grey side cupboard bench units are AutoCAD 3D faces generated by a legacy “Cabinet Lisp”.

Starting with the traditional CAD wire frame view in plan, elevation and isometric/perspective I add visual effects, extreme at first to show what they do, to turn a CAD view into a concept sketch. Playing with the visual styles it’s cool how “sketchy & loose” 2007 can be!

 Download ADT Visual Styles 01 High.wmv (4494.5K)

• Production Notes:
• Heavy compression, to keep the file size down, causes a few seconds blurry video artifacts in a couple of places & is not a flaw in the AutoCAD/ADT graphics system!
• This screen capture was created on an old Pentium 1.8 machine with a non-certified games oriented graphics card (which is why shadows are off). Apart from cutting some view setup regens, to trim the file size, it’s fairly representative of performance on a low spec machine. Just because you don’t have a mega spec box doesn’t mean you can’t try the visual styles, it just may take longer!

Comments

[David]

Is there anyway I can use your Visual Style? I think it would really help simplify some of the drawings I look at regularly... I am using AutoCAD 2007.

thanks!

[Robin Capper]

Thanks, be aware that it looks better on the screen that the video!

[Dermot]

Great little video Robin, can't wait to get my new ADT 2007

Cheers
Dermot