Ha! That letter made my day.

PS Autodesk, how 'bout getting a version for Mac? Is it really that hard to get your team of monkeys to give it a shot now that your software's been out for well over a decade?

Ugh.... I loathe ADT with a passion that passes all human understanding, mainly because of stupid issues as described by Strawberry. It's gotten to the point where anytime I come across a drawing containing ADT elements, I automatically convert it to straight AutoCAD linework.

Never used it. Bentley Microstation.
Still sucks, different list of complaints.

i've gone through several generations of adt but now have switched to autocad 2005 lt. i'm a convert. it's simple and clean.

Ya - I agree. I thought ADT was so bad that after a few months I left a job. After messing with other parametric modeling programs I've come to the conclusion, that as an experianced and veteran CAD monkey, seperate programs for modeling and drawing are nessessary.

I understand the benefits of parametric modeling but its still not practicle or cost effective. Not to mention its overly complex. For those who say "adapt or die" I say be on the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge.

Agreed..... Now they're pushing Revit in a huge way, and I can't help but wonder if it's simply ADT with more window dressing.

In my experience, these "do-it-all" programs like ADT seem to be embraced mainly by firms that crank out large quantities of uninspired design that requires a bare minimum of specialized detailing or unique construction methods.

For anything that involves even a bare hint of innovative design, I haven't come across anything that would replace the traditional plans, sections, details, et al.

The adapt or die slogan has been heard in last month's Arch Record, as well as a Tribune special feature on Genssler last month. I've been hearing it for 5 years now and I'm still not seeing it! Yes it was neat to do a couple projects in BIM but I cant help but feel I was a geunie pig having acidic solutions poured into my eyes. I tried to do a project in BIM on the side (ADT 3.3) and after weeks of fighting it to get to draw louvers, window patterns etc correctly I finally snapped and went back to lines. BTW Archicad is a little bit more intuitive for BIM drawing but then it has other equally annoying problems.

Would any veterans who were around when the CAD monster emerged in the 80's add in to validate or invalidate those who claim Building Informational Modeling is the same as a revolutionary force CAD was to hand drafting and that these are expected (forced???) growing pains?

If only Autodesk would take a couple clues from Adobe and stop changing the location and name and function of integral commands with every new version.

Do you guys realize Autocad now releases their software every year with the actual years on them? so that if you were using Acad2004 in 2006, you feel and look outdated... even when 2002 works when 2006 dosent.

Before they used to name it like R(release)14.

I've hand drafted since 1982 and still do Plus, I use
Acad 2002 lt. Love it for doing production and making changes. I've worked with DrawBase( crashed constantly), ArchiCad and ADT. Messed around with REVIT. I'm not convinced they are for me or anyone who isn't designing Skyscrapers with 50 sheets minimum in there cd package

CAD in general robs you of your creativity and individualism. But it
does help you manage a hundred different projects without having to archive all those drawings in huge flat files that take up valuable SF.
Plus, I can plot those files. Which saves me a trip to the repro shop.
I can email my drawings as PDF's for review. Now if I can only figure out a way to not set foot on a job site.

Is anybody here familiar with Kristine Fallon? Apparently she was involved in SOM's AES system back in the day, and now she's a consultant who has been pushing BIM technology with the zeal of a religious fanatic. 10 years ago I had her as a professor for a CAD class at UIC, and the entire semester was essentially a sales pitch for this "Allplan" CAD platform that she was pushing. (Apparently she had even convinced UIC to remove AutoCAD from all its computers in the CAD lab and replace it with Allplan.) It was without a dout the biggest waste of my tuition money at that school.

Now she's apparently been pushing Revit in a huge way... She seriously thinks that she'll be able to get architects to completely revamp the way they design buildings, and for some reason people seem to take her seriously.

I hate to sound like a reactionary trogdolyte, but the "traditional" methods of documenting building construction (plans, elevations, sections, details, etc.) have been around for centuries, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I see CAD technology as a tool -- nothing more, nothing less -- and not the end-all and be-all of being an architect. I'm more than happy to welcome new technological advances in that regard, but I think this whole BIM thing seems like a lot of overblown hype.

This profession would be so much simpler if we all used 3D Home Architect.

Ahhh... the days of my youth. I loved watching the pen plotters take 45 minutes to draw a sheet.... then pencil plotters took over and allowed you to smudge the drawing so the neanderthal contractors wouldn't know that there was a computer behind the drawing.... Now we get 30 second plots through a giant xerox like machine- the art of drawing is dead.

yeah, but i mean come on, that new dynamic zoom thing is pretty sweet.

Open letter to the design community:

Why do you continue to use AutoDesk and AutoCAD, even though they blow, just because they are "industry standard"? So is "making random soffits everywhere to throw huge low-velocity airconditioning ducts into" and "using Anderson windows" but most of us don't just quietly accept THAT crap.

I wouldn't say the art of drawing is dead... I've seen some very nice 2D drawings created with AutoCAD, and (if I can toot my own horn) I've created a few of them myself.

One thing I've noticed is that people who have a strong background in hand drafting can usually do some very nice work with CAD, and those with no background in hand drafting usually produce crappy CAD drawings.

Gin- yeah, but that's the problem. The new generation of cadmonkeys have never, ever, drawn by hand for more then 2 minutes as required only in arch 101. If you went to architecture school in the past 10 years, there are no drafting tables left- everybody has a computer monitor to suck their brains out. Ok, so my back doesn't hurt any more from leaning too far over the sheet and I don't have smudged sleaves either- just my wrists hurt.

Can we blame autodesk for all this?

I went to school in the last 5 years, I hand drafted at my first job, and never touched a computer in college except to type a paper or check my e-mail.


Update. Lo and Behold, all my room tags came back today. The CAD gods have given me mercy.

By the way, I used ADT (maybe 3.3 or something?) at my last job and was really really good at - it worked great, I could do custom stuff, fast, and all the stuff worked like it should. There must have been an enormous amount of effort by the cad technicians to make it work that way. As an office, we decided what to use out of the software and what to ignore and everyone followed those rules. I don't have that now and I imagine many firms don't, as fogey said, they install it and start drawing.

try Cad2007, really sweet.
have any one use autodesk inventor for architecture?

There are two Quotes I always think of when I think of CAD drawing:

1. "Let me untangle my fingers and try again."

2. "The ingormation one gets out of a cad drawing is only as good as the information you get out of a cad drawing."

I have been working with computers since the days of 286 computers, when the regeneration rate of a drawing gave you time to do your time sheet or call your girl friend.

I run a version of 2002 with an ovelay designed by some friends of mine called CMARCH....It does everything I need to do in 2-D. I did have Auto-Desk loaded before and yikes...I hated it.

oh that should say, "only as good as the information you put into a drawing." That is what architecture is about....I have been handed over projects done by less architecturally experienced individuals which
were an absolute disaster, but they were done on CAD...so the client thought they were getting a buildable project. It doesn't come to light that it isn't buildable until it is in a building officials hands and they say "no can do."

I too wish Autodesk would develop Autocad and their other apps for OS X. It's difficult to do in the beginning but if adobe can do it so can autodesk. does Autodesk use opengl or microsofts own direct x?... i'm asking because if they use direct x it's optimized for windows and will run a lot faster on there, since it's microsofts own technology while open gl is open and is used by most modern Operating Systems so a similar level of performance should be expected from all of them. If microstation and rhino was ported to os x i'd be set. Also Autodesk had the first version of autocad with an actual UI available for the mac operating system while the otherone on dos was still running with cammands. There was also a good version of microsation for the classic mac OS, but they just stopped developing and supporting it, when apple was in trouble in the 90's.

didn't autocad become popular with the architecture profession because architects listened to the advice that engineers gave? Autocad doesn't seem to fit the way architects work, maybe that is why they are copying sketchup in the 2007 release

microstation has said they are going to be re-supported Mac OS in the future, supposedly. They said that like a year ago (dumbasses).

:-D

I appreciate the constancy of keeping the same bugs from 2000 all the way through 2006. That's dedication!

Vectorworks anyone?

I like Vectorworks, think I may convert

i wish adobe and autodesk would merge. they'll be called Autodobe.

"i wish adobe and autodesk would merge. they'll be called Autodobe."

why wreck a reasonably good company? (adobe)

So old fogey is curious about SOM AES. THIS old fogey has a copy of the PC version that IBM ported before killing it. It had to be dumbed down to work with Windows, but most of what you remember is still there. I love irritating ACAD users about how the great new features in release 200X were in AES twenty years ago. By the way, I didn't find it hard to learn. What WAS hard, was the leap from pencil and paper to computer.

Let me shake your memory:

>>>move elements scale z 0 about 0 0 0<<<

To AES illiterates, this is the flatten command, except it works! The data structure of AES was built around nodes. All entities were created by linking nodes. The xyz coordinates of every node were editable independently. In the example above, I'm telling AES to make the z coordinate of all entities equal to zero. It works for any value. I could have said 500 or -3.14159.

I would take back AES today and toss ACAD where it belongs. Anyone truly interested in a powerful CAD system, and not just defending their investment in ACAD, would agree, if they spent some time with it, as old fogey apparently has.

The mention of BIM is interesting, in that the AES architectural module (it had all engineering disciplines) was called MODEL and it was positioned to be an architectural modelling tool. At SOM, we have a long history of three dimensional modelling. As you are all probably aware, we are modelling the WTC in Revit.

I would hardly use that WTC "Freedom Tower" monstrosity as a shining example of what Revit can do.

I know from experience that it is a brilliant example of what Revit can do; I spent two years modelling the basements of that building in Revit. At that time, nobody believed Revit could do it.

The term Freedom Tower, which you contemptuously place in quotes, is not the term in use on this project. The phrase was coined not by the architect or client, but by New York governor Pataki, and repeated in the press so often it became the popular name of the project. The name we use is Tower One.

Over the past three years, I have posted quite a few responses to WTC issues on the AUGI Revit site. You are welcome to look them up there.

Your one sentence remark betrays a very narrow understanding of the issues surrounding this difficult project. I challenge you to create a design. Once you have, you will be required to submit it for approval to:

Daniel Liebeskind
George Pataki
the NYC police department
the NYC fire department
the NYC building department
the NYC zoning department
the Port Authority of NY and NJ
the US Homeland security office
the Federal Aviation Authority
the NYC broadcaster's committee
the survivor's committee
the popular press
the professional press
the environmental community
the real estate community
websites such as this one
bloggers in general
the usual engineers (structural, MEP etc)
the NYC traffic department
the NY state department of transportation
the owner
everyone with an axe to grind
and, of course, David Childs.

I'm sure I left many others out of this list. But, unless you get consensus from all of the above, your work of genius will not be accepted, let alone built. I firmly believe almost any architect faced with the above challenge would walk away from this project.

Have you seen or heard from Mr Liebeskind lately?

Back to my problems, I opened up a drawing today and found one of the blocks that I used EXTENSIVELY (a 2x6 in a wood framed building) is GONE. Disappeared. That deserves some verbal abuse and a whooping. WTF??????

Ok out of all the possible solutions that could have been designed that is what you presented? I'd be embarrassed to be from new york if that was built. no one gives a fuck about the survivor's comimittee, the popular press, bloggers or a website such as this. Looks like mr Silverstein is hoping to stash some cash in his pockets from the insurance payout. I feel so bad for the families that would have some hideous building represent the loved ones that they lost... what kind of message is that sending to them and to other residents of new york: You're not fucking worth it!

I'll eat my hat if Daniel Liebeskind gave his approval on that thing. If I were him, I'd be dreaming about pulling a Howard Roark on it.

If the past 40 years of mediocre crap cranked out by SOM hasn't already established that firm as a bunch of Armani-clad corporate whores, then this project surely will. I'd be ashamed to admit even the slightest connection with that project.

I love the irony of a 1776-foot monument to fear being named the "Freedom Tower"... Even Orwell wouldn't have come up with that in his wildest dreams.

Go Gin!

Mike, I recall Mr. Smith some years ago visiting the University of Arizona. He was showing his flash....the big new project in London and all of the computer power which was going to make it possible. He was a little full of himself. I ask him< "Do you think students in the University should be working on computers?" His response was no,
it is something you will learn, when you get a job in a firm." Oh ya, it was Mr. Smith from SOM. I really wonder how hot was their program?
Yes and I'm sure they are an embarassment to Daniel Liebenskind.

all seriousness aside, thanks for the stories old fogey. with autocad still unresponsive to such basic commands as "gofuckyourself"
("Unknown command "GOFUCKYOURSELF" Press F1 for help.") i can't defend it, but stories like that, it makes you wonder who's lagging who...

The running joke around town is that nobody respects you as a real architect in Chicago until you've been fired by SOM at least once. :)

You could type a complete command, but there were other options. First of all, synonyms made it simple. Your add line command could be 3 characters >>>al .<<< But there was alsothe pop up menu and the drop down menu too. Most commands could be issued without typing at all. I was at AU last November. One of the participants asked the instructor: "why do you type everything?" His answer was: "Because I am a programmer." To truly manipulate a good CAD system you need to understand how to program it. This is why AU is about 75% programming classes.

In AES, every layer was a separate file. Why? Distribution of labor. Let's suppose you have a very large, four story building like the Toronto airport. If you expect to finish it anytime this century, you will need to assign 50 people to it. In Acad, 50 people on one project is a management nightmare. AES could handle that without blinking. In fact, I had one project with 14 buildings, and I could load them all at once.

New York had a big layoff in 1993. We went from over 400 to under 100. I was one of them. I went to Richard Meier. Within 6 months I was back at SOM.

The ENTIRE structural engineering group was let go in one day. They got together and became Gilsanz, Murray and Steficek, a major structural firm today. The Chicago computer group went off and became Premisys. Don't know what became of them.

One thing Premisys did was create the "Squiggle" program which made computer plots appear hand drawn. This was originally for AES; I remember using it. At that time, Premisys was enabling AES to load and save native dwg format. A little known fact is that Autodesk did not create the dwg format. There were, and are, open dwg organizations that had dwg tools. Premisys bought a package from Sirlin Software which enabled AES to read dwg & dxf. Premisys realized that with their new understanding of dwg, they could adapt Squiggle to dwg format and market it. That's also the reason ACAD keeps release 12 dxf around. Too many third party developers, including Microstation, depend on it.

Autodesk eventually bought Sirlin and fired everyone, then clamped down on the dwg format. That's why every ACAD compatible system since release 12 has had to be reverse engineered. Acad won't release the inner workings of dwg the way that Sirlin did back when.

Fogester, don't worry about it, hijacking is what it's all about. It's what makes the internet FUN.

"I didn't know until recently that Photoshop was originally developed by Industrial Light and Magic for use in the movie "Willow"..."

I think you are thinking of Pixar's software, what is it called Renderman? It was developed by George Lucas's studio and sold off to finance another movie project, to Steve Jobs, for something like 5 million $. Pixar was recently sold to Disney for $7Billion, jobs had about 50% of the shares.

from Wikipedia,

"Early history
Pixar was founded as the Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm that was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). After years of remarkable research success, and key milestones in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, the group was purchased in 1986 by current Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs after he had been kicked out of Apple (the company he founded with Steve Wozniak) and was looking for something to do with his money. He paid US$5 million to George Lucas and put US$5 million as capital into the company. The sale reflected George Lucas' desire to stop the cash flow losses associated with his 7 year research projects associated with new entertainment technology tools, as well as his company's new focus on creating entertainment product rather than tools. A contributing factor was cash flow difficulties following Lucas' 1983 divorce concurrent with the sudden drop off in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi. The newly independent company was headed by Dr. Edwin Catmull, President and CEO, and Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, Executive Vice President and Director. Jobs served as Chairman of the Board.
Initially, Pixar was a high-end hardware company whose core product was the Pixar Image Computer, a system which was primarily sold to government agencies and the medical community. One of the leading buyers of Pixar Image Computers was Disney studios, which was using the device as part of their secretive CAPS project, using the machine and custom software to migrate the laborious Ink and Paint part of the 2D animation process to a more automated and thus efficient method. The Image Computer never sold well. In a bid to drive sales of the system, Pixar employee John Lasseter — who had long been creating short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr., to show off the device's capabilities — premiered his creations at SIGGRAPH, the computer graphics industry's largest convention, to great fanfare."

"I didn't know until recently that Photoshop was originally developed by Industrial Light and Magic for use in the movie "Willow"..."

yup, it was indeed. seems Photoshop and Renderman both have their origins in Steve Jobs led companies.

What became of the AES sourcecode? The last I heard, a Norwegian development firm that had built an application around it owned the code after IBM abandoned it. I have a copy of the PC version, ported to Win95, which runs in XP compatability mode. I use it every now and then to clean up some of the intractible ACAD problems. It was especially good at colinear lines, coplanar elements, and, as I mentioned earlier, flattening. It beats the pants off of overkill.

The history of software is interesting. If more people bothered to learn something about it, they wouldn't be so defensive of the one and only program they ever learned. I have worked with four different CAD systems, used mainframes, workstations and PCs. With that perspective, sometimes the vehement ravings of the Maya crowd just looks narrow minded to me.

wow.

Looks like Texaco at Canary Wharf?

Non-AES users: Acad was at about release 9 in 1991. Rhino, FormZ, Maya and Catia didn't even exist.

One thing to note. AES is capable of having opaque and transparent polygon fill AT THE SAME TIME. The fill properties are in the data. Acad uses the fill property from the plotter device driver, so it's either on or off. Revit, to it's credit, allows transparency and opacity at the same time. Translation: shadows can fall over different materials such as grass and paving, and still retain the texture of the underlying material

Mike, all this talk about AES etc is great, but i have to admit, the Freedom Tower design SUCKS. I did not like Libeskind's design too, but the SOM one really sucks ass. Typical corporate architecture.

That was my rant, now lets figure out how to get AES back