Do you put up with inefficient 2D-3D workflows every day?

Ecuadorian

When I worked for a building company, their planning department had this really inefficient way of doing things:

Mr. Designer drafted a design in paper, then started to draw the floor plan and perhaps a facade or two in AutoCAD
He then handed me the .dwg and I had to build a 3D model out of it in ArchiCAD for rendering in Art-lantis. Of course, I had to correct his mistakes and read his mind as to what exactly was he thinking of. With time, I think I actually started to read his mind.
After the bosses (most of which are not architects or designers) and the sales people (Yes, the sales people!) approved a design, I had to extract facades and sections from the 3D model for the other draftsmen to work with. Since at the time ArchiCAD didn't have booleans, I had to do a lot of cleanup before handing those drawings to them. They then added dimensions and annotations and also made more changes to the design.
They then handed me again those .dwg drawings with the new floor plans and facades so I could build an updated 3D model. Again I had to correct the mistakes they made and do some mind-reading.
Goto > Step 3 until days to deadline = 0.

Do you have to put up with similar inefficiencies in your workplace?

honoluludesktop

Even when you are doing everything by your self, even before the advent of CAD. Just be glad that they don't require you to do it in AutoCad : )

tomasz

I think it is the reality. I would hardly imagine a shortcut here.
There is one. If draftsman had good enough tools to do their detailing in Archicad (an a company could afford it), then ... they would screw up your model , but all the walls would be in their positions, although 3D model wouldn't look so good anymore..

I am dreaming of a good and simple program to combine those two - 3d design, modeling and detailing..

Tomasz

Daniel

Miguel, when you have that many people involved your gonna have design changes. Very few projects remain unchanged from conception through construction. What does seem innefficient is that you cannot import your skp file directly into your cad program to generate your elevations.

dale

You just described 1/2 of my working life. ( the part where I'm not doing the design work)
Although I can successfully import full 3d models from AutoCad Architect, Vectorworks, and Softplan, I find that SketcUp doesn't like the geometry they bring, and aside from the problems caused by bad draftsmanship, they are still glitchy.
I am going to try to get some of the culprits to use DoubleCAD XT, from idx http://www.doublecad.com, as from the sounds of it it may make the integration with SketchUp fairly simple,( and I like the integration between SketchUp and rendering software) while providing at least the AutoCad users with a familiar set of tools to use.
I know it has been said before, but it is interesting how there seems to be boundaries that software designers don't cross. I know that some processes seem to be under patent (hence the SketchUp shadow bug), but I keep wondering why someone isn't working on an integrated solution.