MAC USERS OF THE WORLD---UNITE!

ARCH offices on Macs aren't as rare as Autodesk wants you to think.

I draft all the time on Macs. I work for two different firms right now, one is Arch/Interiors (all macs) and the other is commercial kitchen design (dual platform) and we hve no trouble in the AutoCAD world.

Vectorworks is great software, fully functional conventional 2d drafting in plan/elevation and lots of 3d/rendering capabilities too. It is deceptively simple.

Sketchup is good for quick 3d models, massing studies, schematic presentation, but is NOT a substitute for conventional drafting software. You can not put together permit sets let alone CD's with sketchup. It's a conceptualization tool...A good one, but not a detail tool.

Vectorworks supports .dwg import/export, and is far more pleasureable (and cheaper) than AutoCad, IMHO.

While I'm at it, you can buy a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that allows you to draft in scale, using conventionl drafting tools. It's made by Hot Door, from Petaluma, CA, I believe.

If you know illustrator...it's another way to go. www.hotdoor.com

I don't have any experience with it personally, but I've heard good things about ArchiCAD as well.

designrocks,

if you are a student VECTORWORKS will hook you up with a big discount and tuturial CD's [ at least they did two years ago ]

but you have to prove you are a student.

...and vector works rocks...

i worked for a few offices that used VW on macs, one office slightly famous-ish, but all small.

vectorworks is fine for most uses, absolute rubbish for 3-d whatever anyone says (well, about as good as autocad i suppose), and the layers and classes can be a pain until you get your head oriented, especially if you come from autocad-world.

but it handles graphics in a nice way. and i learned to use the software in half a day, so the learning curve is fantastic. i haven't used it for a few years now as i prefer autocad (sorry mac users, but it does seem better in spite of its faults), and expect it is even better and easier to use...

there is also the option of powercad. it is also a spawn of minicad and similar enough to VW if you want something cheaper but with the same feel (minus the 3d, i think).

I heard it so many times that vw is supposed to be cheap, but have never seen a quote that proves that... sure depends on what you compare it to...

Personally no experence on macs as the school I go to uses pc'c only as do 99.9% of students but alot of firms my friends are working in are on macs and those using vectorworks say its better for graphic presentations but acad/illustrator os still better but they say its far less accurate than acad. saying that one of the largest offices here in dublin managed to design our largest stadium purely on vectorworks which has had a few wondering how they managed but its oviously ok!
Other friends are using microstation with mac and swear by it .that said all friends on MACs miss the old rolerball, 2 button mouse although apple now have one I don't know anyone with one or if it works with the older programmes.

I do all my day-job work on a Dell PC w/ ACad 2000 and all my side-job work at home on a G5 w/ Vectoworks 11. I personally like the layer/class setup in VW way better than ACad layers. More than anything it's the little differences that mess with me, like how the offset tool works, but that's mostly a result of using both programs daily and needing to make the mental switch.

Anyone missing their mouse on a mac must not have noticed that all macs come with usb ports aplenty......

Jump...I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss VW as a 3d tool. I use it plenty, and with great result. I concede that it's not a rendering-specific software, so it's not going to be formz or rhino, and VW walkthroughs can leave a little to be desired.

That said, the new VW12 has made some major improvements regarding rendering speed, radiosity and textural capabilities...and the ability to do nearly all of my drafting and 3d modeling in one piece of software is not to be discounted. Between VW, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, AutoCad, etc, I can only handle so many programs in my peanut-brain at a time. Sure I'd love to add Maya to my repertoire, and have live-action client-interaction with the model, but who's clients are paying for that?

And when we need high-end renderings, we can easily export to Artlantis. Anything beyond that, most firms will need to outsource their rendering productions, unless they've got video-gamers on staff.

What's a full license cost these days for AutoCad?

VW12 I think for a new single site license runs around a grand.

And who says you can't design a stadium with vectorworks?

Powercadd works at the office. At school tho I manage to get by doing everything in FormZ draft mode.

my first job out of school used Vellum software combined with Form-Z, Freehand, Pagemaker, Photoshop, Clarisworks to do everything from drafting, color, modeling and marketing.. and of course, scheduling

i often miss that place

I agree with jump; VW gave me some headache when I tried for the first time... you'll get used to it, though. I loved PowerCADD; it doesn't have any 3d capabilities, but it's a fantastic program for 2D, and it's very easy to export its file to form-z to do 3d stuff.
SketchUp is a very good program, but as someone said earlier, forget about producing DD set out of SketchUp. That said, it is very useful tool to design anything.... and it's cheap (relatively).

I have heard good things about archiCADD as well, I have a PC desk top and a mac laptop, never thought I would use the archiCADD that I have on the mac but now my PC is in storage. One of my coworkers swears by it, so I am going to give it a shot. Apparently she uses it on a PC, so I think that the plus with archiCADD and vectorworks is that you dont need to switch hardware to use the software.
Not sure how much archiCADD cost but vectorworks is a fraction of the cost of a seat of Autodesk products and the stripped down versions allows you to work with elements from the more expensive "Architect" suite.
It seems that more and more small firm are getting off the autodesk band wagon. Its just not worth the $$ for the quality of product they provide.

im a mac user too but nothing can be compared to rhino3d...sorry

Mightylittle is correct that Sketchup is not a drafting program. However, i've found it to be quite a good "detail tool" and have been working out the more complicated structure/material intersections in Sketchup and then either creating ACAD drawings based on the investigation or exporting a 2d image from Sketchup into ACAD and labeling it up as a NTS 3D view.

There is a very clever and elegant combination of Skecthup and a drafting tool. it's called BOA and I use it for all of my projects.

It has one 3d tool called the block which is a six sided shape from which all shapes, curved or straight.

It's a great program and more designers should be aware of it. It's Mac OS X only now and is out of France.

This is kind of a pedestrain project but it hints at the power of BOA:

This is a layout sheet for porch set and shows one way how a detail is deilineated between roof and fascia.




BOA has the workplane which allows you to work anywhere in the model in section, plan section or plan. You can put the workplane whereever you like:

Oops... but you guys get the idea....

Here's the idea:

http://www.boa-research.fr/

Power CADD...It's beautiful to draft with..

I thought that the Autodesk softwares worked on macs... they dont ?

i always thought that, at the end of the day AutoCadd was the best

i use archiCAD on mac and have done for a while now. its 3d capabilites are far superior to autocad or vectorworks and i find it a lot more logical and easy to use than vectorworks. it also comes with 'plotmaker', its own dtp / drawing issue package. very usefull. certainly worth looking in to although it isnt cheap and is dongle protected which can be a bitch if you have mutliple desktops.

atowle: the 3d and the material counts and schedules I hear are really good for building programing/design development. I have version 8.1 I think, which doesnt require the dongle. I got my copy from a friend in grad school, but I hear it cost 8k a seat?

To do 3d cds - form z - illustrator and VW12 - works fine for me and mah MAC