Ideas in CAD

dylan

This is an interesting article if you hav not already read it.
http://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2008/issue30-sketchbook.html

I tried the Sketchbook software and used my Wacom, but I just cannot get a drawing done as neatly as with pen and paper. Maybe this is down to practice and lack of experience with a tablet, but for me it feels pretty awkward. I guess if I kept at it, then I would improve, but I did think to myself, do I really need this? Why not just stick with sketching on paper?
The main thing interesting me was the fact I would have instant electronically stored files.

pav_3j

the best of both worlds?

pav

chrisglasier

I think this anecdote adds another perspective ...

An architect had a friend who was a whiz at producing photo realistic models of interiors. After a quick lunch with a client to receive the brief for a chic new restaurant, the architect visited the premises and within two days they had come up with what seemed like photographs of the finished interior. The architect next met the client and proudly presented the images. The client's face dropped. "I thought you would bring along some rough sketches, so that we could go through the ideas together."

remus

Chris, surely that problem would be easily solved by talking to the client

pav and dylan, im still pondering on your posts...

pav_3j

lets face it remus, pen an paper is here to stay.
and i find it hard to believe that you don't think the same way he he

pav

remus

Of course its here to stay, theres no arguing that. Whta im trying to work out/discuss is wether UIs and software will ever reach the point where they are a viable alternative. (thats actualyl pretty different from what i wrote in the OP, but it raises pretty similar issues.)

chrisglasier

@remus said:

Chris, surely that problem would be easily solved by talking to the client

This took place at least ten years ago in Hong Kong, at a time and in a place where the newest technology and speed would surely caress the client. It failed. From this it seems understanding what others expect can be as significant as the tools that suit the way you work.

... and so on

Chris

pav_3j

@remus said:

Of course its here to stay, theres no arguing that. Whta im trying to work out/discuss is wether UIs and software will ever reach the point where they are a viable alternative. (thats actualyl pretty different from what i wrote in the OP, but it raises pretty similar issues.)

hmm,

laptop computer: £1000
mouse: £10
skecthup pro: $495

drawing on the back of an old letter using a pencil you found on a colleagues desk: priceless.

there are some techniques in design you can buy, for everything else there's sketching.

he he

pav

remus

CHris, none the less it is the designers fault more than anything else, he chose the wrong method of presentation for the client, that doesnt mean that there is something at fault with the technology. In the same way as if you tried to present a quick sketch for the final realisation of a project.

Pav, do you have a computer? id say its a fairly standard peice of equipment these days. Not so much with swanky interfaces (tablets, tablet PCs etc.) but give it 10 years or so, im sure there will be some new interface device we could have never lived without.

pav_3j

@remus said:

Pav, do you have a computer? id say its a fairly standard peice of equipment these days. Not so much with swanky interfaces (tablets, tablet PCs etc.) but give it 10 years or so, im sure there will be some new interface device we could have never lived without.

i agree with you on computers being a standard piece of equipment, but like you say the "swanky interfaces" not so much (at this current moment in time). let's not forget though that these swanky interfaces, pretty much still rely on sketching techniques, graphics tablets, tablet PCs, are still fundamentally based on the good old pen and paper.

who knows, maybe there will be some kind of "computer paper" (there probably already is) but this is still essentially a development on sketching.

prehistoric man had cave walls and natural pigments, the egyptians had papyrus and ink, modern man a sketchbook and a pencil.
i'm not saying that we wont be drawing on tablet pc's in the furure, i'm almost certain we will be, but the question was about whether we would be designing in CAD, and as far as i am concerned this is just an evolution in sketching, not a change in the way ideas are put down.

pav

bubbalove

In the architecture firm I work at we always do sketches first. We've NEVER started a design on CAD! It seems absolutely pointless to try to design anything on CAD when it takes much longer to do then when using pen and paper. Once we get the go ahead on the design from the sketches... we then start to build models and technical documents! Sketchup can be fast but it is still not as fast as pen and paper!

remus

DO you think its ever going to reach the point where it is possible ot do ideas in CAD?

Pav, more pondering to do...

matteo

OPEN LIST
feel free to edit and complete it

Pencil pros:

doesn't need power supply
no batteries
cheap to buy
few maintenance
the weight is ludicrous and you can carry it everywhere without backpack or case
no boot or startup time required, no reboot!!
no software updates, no patches, no malware
no snobbish win vs mac vs linux: it really just works

Pencil cons:

doesn't work well in the darkness
you can not copy and paste
if you want to email a sketch, first you have to scan or take a picture of it
no undo! (well, I remember the age when I had to erase ink lines with a blade)
color fills and patterns are not so quick and easy to generate.
ink color choice reduced if compared with a computer screen. Drawing in truecolor by hand kills the rendering time of your organic hardware.
most of carbon units cannot easily generate shadows neither produce a decent perspective or even figure out how it works: the best trained units take a lot of time to operate such functions

Tablet pros and cons: just reverse the above list.

Future evolutions, not so far to come: oled diplays look very promising.
Take a look to MS Surface:
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Really intriguing

/matteo

chrisglasier

@remus said:

CHris, none the less it is the designers fault more than anything else, he chose the wrong method of presentation for the client ...

Precisely the point. Well done!

Chris

Stu

Well my workflow [in landscape design] hasn't included anything other than a keyboard for eight or nine years...I just never do preliminary sketches.
I find I can get concepts on screen as fast as I need to... with editing/drawing tools like delete, copy, mirror etc far quicker and more accurate than any pencil.

I start in ACAD....quickly migrate to SU....where most of the creative work is done, and then export back to ACAD for the working drawings.

Something like a 9.1 EeePC would make all this truely portable and independant of the desk [top].

Phil Rader AIA

ideas come from people. Getting those ideas out of your head and in front of other people is simply a user preference based on your capabilities with the medium.

Having said that I think we all employ some measure of hand drawing to visualize our thoughts but I have found that the quicker I get my thoughts into the computer the more flexibility I have to massage those thoughts and present them. What I love about computers is they are output "independent" IE: I can print out at 1/8" scale 1/4" scale 1/2" scale etc. I can print to my 11x17 laser printer, my epson 4000 color printer, or my large format plotter. So I can create something once and use it multiple times.

I agree that at times I just need to take a print and sketch ideas onto it. but within seconds of having an idea resolve on paper I jump back into the computer.

There is no going back now. I doubt seriously that students coming out of schools today have the manual drafting skills necessary to complete all the required drawings to convey an idea by hand. SO in that regard at some point all of us who were taught manual drafting and perspective drawing, and water color, etc. in school, at some point we are no longer in charge and the students who don't have or value those skills or for that matter need them will take over and just like any craft if the younger generation does not perpetuate it it will fade away.

lapx

Well said Phil. I think it all depends on what you are comfortable with and task at hand. Although I am biased to hand drawing in some cases there is no way I could create some designs on paper vs computer especially when a lot of repetitive geomerty is involed. Think about the parametric high rise designs that are created these days. I'm sure by now there are some guy's out there that have quickly done some masterful works on the computer w/o touching pencil n paper.
Ive seen some sculptors create some master pcs w/o ever touching a drawing. It
has more to do with the individuals skill and comfort level and choosing the right tool for the job.

matteo

Sorry for my poor english, but I don't know another word for it: vitality

This is the real difference between pencil and computer aided drawings.
When i draw with a pencil, body and mind (brain, spirit) are one single thing, work together. There's no bezier curve that can emulate a hand drawn line. Computer drawing is more an intellectual act, an act of the mind olny. Maybe with the exception of tablet input devices, there's not any real good interface between human and calculator. Computers can fasten your work, but can't bring alive your work.

Otherwise, how do you explain the plethora of attempts to make your computer drawings more "natural", from the edge styles of sketchup to the watercolor tutorials for photoshop masters: just look at the "how to make it watercolor like" threads that there are only in this forum.

No it's not the some as real watercolor. The fragrance of the paper, the graininess/texture of the paper, the imperfections that make it unique, the real colors: a printer gamut is usually very limited: you can never obtain deep blues, decent purples, blilliant greens. Even the rgb gamut of the best screens is something limited.
The some applies to all "natural" mediums, not only watercolor.

You can draw some masterpieces with your computer, but up to me they lack in vitality. It's many years that I try to achieve a vital result with computer, but it looks like the holy graal quest.

I wish I had more time to draw without computer.

snobbishly yours
/matteo

Phil Rader AIA

Mateo is on to something that I feel should be mentioned also.

"Pleasure"

Doing drawings by hand is pleasurable, enjoyable, there is an ephemeral feedback between the media and the user. The feeling of the pencil as it bumps along on the paper, the feedback you get that the tip of the lead is getting dull and the brains response to roll your fingers. the unexpected results when the paper absorbs the watercolor pigment and the visual end result is pleasing to your eyes even though you had not intended it that way. There is a symbiotic inter connectedness between the creator and the medium. The computer has something similar but there is a lag time and the medium never changes and is not random.

there are logical reasons why the computer is the correct choice to express ideas in a busy and demanding world, however the allure and pure pleasure of creating something with ones own hand will never be replace by the computer.

I find myself in situations at meetings where my sketching skills have diminished because of lack of use and I don't have the ability to completely illustrate an idea to clients. My brain says if only I had my laptop fired up and could model it in sketchup I could be more clear.

Sketchup is the first application that I actually consider an "on the spot" medium. it's simple user interface and powerful capabilities seperate it form its bloated competition.

I would never consider having AutoCAD running in a live presentation because its so lifeless and lacks any character.

plot-paris

I believe (and I hope I am right, because it is my greatest dream), that the future of architects and designers will be to use a pen on a computer screen.

in my opinion the fusion of handdrawing and computer aided design is the only sensible solution.
the simple reason for that - try to write your name with a mouse... you will barely succeed in producing clean hand writing. you are simply much more precise with a pen than with a mouse.

of course technology has to improve before that truely works. but it is not too far in the future anymore (I hope )

even today there exist prototypes of so called e-paper that are as thin as a fraction of a millimeter and are equal to newspapers in terms of contrast (because they really behave like ink on paper, reflecting light instead of emmiting it).
at the moment these displays are restricted in size to some inches. but the near future they will be available in A3 size with a resolution high enough to give a true, pixelfree image, even when looking at it upclose.

I imagine using your hands (similar to the iPhone) to navigate across your canvas. you can choose to stick the drawing stage to your screen to imitate the behavour of real paper. but if you run out of space you can simply unlock it and move it arround.
the touchscreen will destinguish between hand- and pen-input. that enables you for example to rest your and on the screen when drawing with the pen. drumming with 4 fingers of one hand on the screen in a short succession calles up a context menue. otherwise the screen stays completely free of any buttons (except of a colour pallete perhaps).

the tip of the pen will be a high-tech device on it's own, not only measuring the precise pressure and angle of the pen, but also changing it's smoothness (through a material that changes it's attributes when recieving an electric current). thus the pen can simulate different types of pens (like pencil, marker, brush) and give the impression of drawing on rough canvas (instead of completely clean plastic).

you start your design with an interface, that is close to Photoshop. you sketch like with a real pencil. but you have the advantages of a computer - you can change your pen without laying your drawing device out of your hand, you can change colours by tipping it on a button on the screen. most important you have a "undo" function. you can draw in layers easily, fill faces with colour, draw only in a selection - everything a piece of software can provide.
in addition to that you may have aids to slightly correct your lines to a coordinate system when active or to help you drawing a precise circle, ellipse, rectangle...

when you finished your first sketch, you can use the SketchUp tools, push/pull in the first place, to advance into 3D - within the same application. this new SketchUp will refer to faces rather than to edges (because you draw lots of small lines, when sketching). you can define the grade of simplification (like ignoring small lines, closing gaps) and angle-/shape-correction (putting lines to a right angle, where obviously intended, translating sketched curves to arcs, circles, bezier-curves), even choose different correction values for different parts of the same drawing.

if you need a break, you will just leave your sketching tablet lying on the table. the drawing will still be visible, because an e-paper display doesn't need engergy to display information (only for changing it).

you can easily transfer sketches/models from your tablet to the large table-display, simply by performing a dragging movement starting on the tablet display (lying on the table) and ending on the table-display. because it is one continuous motion (same speed, finger tip size and curve) the two systems will automatically synchronize the data.

then I poste one drawing by simply dragging it into one of the SCF gallery threads. one of you guys sketches some suggestions on a new layer and posts it back in the thread (only the layer with coordinate information, which I then drag onto my drawing...)

sorry guys, got carried away way too far
could go on for hours.

essence of what I wanted to say: the natural and intuitiv use of a pen will be combined with the precision and multifunctionality of a computer - in sketching, as well as in construction drawing.