Best Autocad App For Mac
Agathe Thies
So, who has done their own trial & error of setting a good Visual Style that is tuned for the best overall 3D performance and look? Any ideas? If not I was going to start really "munkying" around with it and see what performs the best for me. Like for instance, the Conceptual V.S. looks cool, but SUCKS when it comes to performance. Just thought I would see if anyone already had a good setup already. Thanks in advance.
I've found that 3DHidden and Conceptual are really not good styles to use while working. They really bog down your system. I would recommend sticking with wireframe and realistic. I constantly switch back and forth between these two visual styles while working.
I rarely use them during editing, I will apply them to see what the plot will look like, then turn them off. Then for plotting I only set it in PS through the MVIEW command, Shadeplot options. Otherwise for even small files it takes way too long for me.
Yep, I agree. I think I've narrowed it down to Realistic, with No Isolines, and Facet edges instead of Smooth. Plus, I updated my graphics driver, and that alone helped. I'm ready to rock 'n' roll now. Thanks for the reassurance guys.
Beyond that: Start with the F1 key, it's literally the most valuable tool available to you. It has the Hitchhiker's Guide to AutoCAD Electrical which might be one of the easiest to understand overviews of how the software is intended to work.
From there it's up to you. The best way to learn, is to fail. Just go draw stuff. It'll get messed up, and your search for fixes will teach you not just how to correct that one mistake, but also how to prevent others. And, doing things that way means all of your learning is focused only on the things you need to know, rather than spending an entire day reading up on something you'll never use in the future (looking at you, Conduit Tools).
Brad Coleman, Electrical Draftsman
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There is no free easy way to learn it other than working with others at a company where it is used. The best way to self learn is to do it in pieces and not overwhelm yourself with how to do too many things at once. The full power of the package is huge and isn't all needed immediately to gain benefits. Use the help files, this forum, videos, and searches on the internet to find answers where you get stuck.
Here is a simplified form of the steps I used to learn it.
1) I first learned regular AutoCAD and know it really well. You did not state if you already know regular AutoCAD. Knowing how to do stuff manually is a fall back. It can be done while learning AE.
2) I learned how to set up a project with my drawings automatically updated on title blocks and page numbers only. I did not use any wire numbering or symbols from AE at this point.
3) I then implemented wire numbers but continued to use standard AutoCAD Blocks.
4) I then converted my Blocks to Symbols and expanded into reports, panel layouts, and everything else over time. I now use almost all features in the package, but it took a long time to learn all of it.
If i'm designing a small building but want to present a couple of options to the client for the way the it looks, be it layout, roof plan, elevation etc, what is the best way to model these options? How do I manage the different options in model space?
Well, that's a good question, because I strive to the best for more than a 10 years. I did some conclusions.
In my opinion it is very suitable "designviewer". You can load you .DWG or .3D DWF file there.
In case you load .DWG not only 3D but layouts of this file also can be overviewed.
It is very nice that you can share the link for your custumer very easy.
In addition , if it posible some nice perspective views helps a lot to understand home designe and and reciew positive feedback.
If you are using AutoCAD Architecture, are you using the Drawing Management feature (Project Browser and Project Navigator). If so, I have read that some set up Divisions to organize the files containing various alternate layouts (assuming that there are some common elements).
If you are not using the Drawing Management feature, or are using "plain" AutoCAD, you can do a similar thing, modeling common elements in one file and then manually setting up separate files for each alternate version, then creating a new file for each final combination of options, externally referencing the appropriate files. In the options files, you can externally reference the common elements file as an overlay to coordinate each option with the common elements.
In addition to the suggestions already posted, there is a great article about drawing management specific to AutoCAD Architecture, highlighting some features you can use to stay organized. Model space views, located in the project navigator tab, would be perfect for managing multiple design options. A more in depth look at understanding drawing management tools can be found in this article, About Drawing Management. Let me know if you have any other questions!
sorry in some reasons i thought that you are asking about showcasing
And let me add a bit to post of mentor David_W._Koch and Kevin.Palmer
If you use Autocad Architecture..use Project Browser and Project Navigator even for small houses. It is really speed up working
In autocad, I would have 3 options set on p1.dwg I would also have an existing site plan and a new site plan. In the new site plan I would xref the existing site plan and the p1. I would then copy/xref clip the site and all the other options in the same file to then place on the sheet.
Hello, I've been researching and thinking about buying my own 3D printer. I know that I'm going to use an AutoCAD product but I don't know what printer. What printers or what printer company work best with AutoCAD softwares? I've look at some, but they either use their own software or had bad reviews. Thanks
A few little things, Im going for around a 6" by 6" by 6" printing dimensions that's less than $1,000. The quality doesn't have to be the best and for materials, I'd be using PLA filament. Also, I don't need a printer that has a multicolor feature, unless it works better with the software. Thanks again
Size wise, I would prefer something around 6" by 6" by 6" and less than $1,000. Also, I would like to use PLA filament only because I've used it before, but I don't know how much stuff I would print. I would base it off how much filament is on the spool. Thanks again
Thanks so much, I've been trying to find a 3D printer for quite sometime and decide to try the forums to see what people people recommend. Also, would other printers from the same company work as good? The one you recommended was a fair price, but if some of the other ones would be better I wouldn't mind paying $100 or $200 more for something that I'll keep for a while.
I'm doing my work with AutoCAD as well as with Fusion 360, then exporting STL and most parts are then prepared using Simplify3D (which costs about USD 150,- but it is really worth the price doing better and faster prints than other packages I tried).
Thanks for the recommendation, it helps a lot to get information from people who have some sort of experience when it comes to something so expensive as a 3D printer. I look forward to making my purchase. Thanks again
At one point, the best way to get Vectorworks and AutoCAD to talk with one another was to draft in 1:1, use classes, have one design layer, and create viewports (in scale) on sheet layers. Is that still the case?
Something that is important is to find out on beforehand if there are any requirements that need to be met for the dwg file when it comes to layer (class) naming, fonts used, line weights, templates, line style names etc.
Due to the kind of drawings I often make I tend to export the sheet layers to dwg files, that way it makes no difference whether I am using multiple design layers, as long as the classes do match the required dwg layers.
One thing that is a good thing to do is to put dimensions as annotations in the viewport for anything larger than A3 size, that often works out better than having dimensions on the design layer. The downside is that this is a bit more cumbersome when dimensions need to be updated if the drawing itself changes quite a bit.
Because AutoCAD does not support design layers with different heights the way Vectorworks does this means that an object having Z=3' on layer 1 and another object also having Z=3' on layer two with a Z height of 10' will both end up as both having a Z of 3' in AutoCAD instead of 3' and 13' respectively.
The only way to solve this is to either put all objects on a single layer at correct height relative to the lowest level. (e.g. move all object from layer 2 to layer 1 and then increase the Z-value with 10 in the object info palette) or to export all design layers as separate dwg files and then correct the Z-values in the AutoCAD software after importing each layer.
I'm looking for the easiest and quickest way to create jpgs from my layout tabs in my dwg files. When I print to jpg, the quality is horrible, and I can't seem to figure out how to make it better. The best way I can find is to first make an eps file, and then convert this to a jpg, however this is pretty cumbersome. Does anyone know of a lisp routine that would do this? Or maybe a way to improve the quality of the print to jpg function?
Well if stock export modes do not work for you, and you don't wanna use pdf format for some reason, I can advise you to install a free pdf printer (like bullzip or pdfill or cutepdf). They also allow you to print to jpeg / png etc. You can adjust the quality with these options.
For my company, we have a lot of dwgs that we reuse for a bunch of projects e.g. paint booths and large industrial equipment views. We have a cloud system for the files but I have to download the file and open it up to copy it into another drawing. So it's hard to navigate through so many dwgs. I was thinking to organize the files in a blocks library but I would create multiple dwgs with different categories and have the blocks renamed as the previous drawing names. I was just wondering if this would be the best practice when creating the blocks. Any suggestions would be great as well. Thank you for your time and help!
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