Thanks Eric, your work speaks volumes about your abilities, There may be some salesman that will owe you a commission one day. I appreciate your input.

I was a pencil pusherat at one time. The adventure of easy 3D was the bait that enticed me to switch to cad. My hand renderings were good, but having perspectives of what you were drawing instantly was captivating. I am still captivated..... by cad etiqutte, file and layer structures, and hard drive organization. I think the BIM revolution has opened more doors to better file integration and improved graphics for all cadologists. But SU feels better than any cad program I have ever handled, and I find myself thinking that whatever work I am doing should be in SU; then export for plot. I like the simpleness of the component structure and the reliability and swiftness of imports, exports, basically the ability of SU to play with others is very nice. So SU lacks the complexities of cad; this is not necessarily a inhibitant, but more a freedom.

Cad systems are built on a file structure that may be decades old, but even when these files structures are old, they still dont seem to change much. It seems that SU, is very versatile and more easily customozable than other drawing programs. I mention this without ever tried Chief, Datacad, or Softplan, or VectraWorks, or the plethora of systems that remain to be named. But this file structure seems to have the ability for manipulation and improvement...there are rubies that count componenets, and when SU exports to cad the results are very clean and detailed.

Is there a possibility to make SU the type program Revit is? Or are there other softwares that have the ease of SU and the cad capabilities of Revit? Are there any Spirit users that can make a comparison? I ask this squestion because I feel Revit has set a standard and there are many smart software engineers out there who could write new programs.

First, let me say: I do not want or intend to start a cad war. I wish to discuss the merits of multiplatform designing, data flow and coordination vs.the all in one cad softwares (BIM) and whether it is worth the transfer of all the archive data and work flows to have a new better way.

In the past year I have become aware of the new BIM movement and the distinct possibility I may need to change my software. Not that the vendors 'got me' or anything like that but because software seems to have suddenly become adept at the things I hate doing; like referencing marker bubbles to pages no.s and details. Soft ware like SU is letting me work with one version of my drawing, instead of several (like; flr plans, elevations, sections,etc). I will say I do hate trying to coordinate different software platforms about as much as I dislike coordinating changes through many drawings of the same building.

The big cad toys out there have substantial pricing and though it looks like 200,000 cadologists have no problem coughing up the cash and the promise to pay each year at the appointed time, I am wary of having all the cad eggs in the same basket. One thought is to use several less expensive programs to get my product, thus no single vender has me tied up in their product and their development, and their gun point pricing. catch my drift? The other concern is with all the seats sold, apparently not all are being used, some big cad co's will let licenses transfer without restrictions, while some strictly prohibit it. Is the restriction on reselling to quench the market from being saturated with software that users figure out wasn't worth the expenditure?

I think the biggest hurdle is the learning curve, and the possibility that I may have to switch back to the previous method of doing things to get details on paper. I have to keep production up, no matter what kind of transition I am making.

I think the paying public is expecting miraculous flexibility from the building designer, and their software. They want to defer making decisions and thus the design has to stay flexible, So more powerful easy to manage software can definatly be a help.

Some of the avatars on this site have an impressive arsenal of software at their disposal, and I think they can see both sides of this puzzle, so I want to ask: is the newer BIM software worth the process, or/and is it better to keep the computer loaded with many softwares to produce drawings, thus being more lateral and able to shift with the new software developers offerings..

arghhh....argghhh...arrgggghhhh

@alexander said:

@unknownuser said:

On the Dutch?

YEs I mean on the dutch forum, when i signed in there
i just got trouble with spam and had it never before

If you mean the posh forum, I signed up there with a different address and nothing has come of it.. I think it is goofle groups. I set up a new addy for google groups, we'll see what happens.

I wonder if the old SU forum membership lists are safe?....Maybe I'll unsubscribe at the old forum.

I have further development about the Ggroups display of addys. If you sign in to the message groups, you see an incomplete address at the message header. If you subscribe to the message groups, where it sends you an email either one a day or each time a post is made, the emails are shown in full at each header.
like this:

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Jun 2 2007 2:44 am
From: ghdvoice@yahoo.com

On 29 mai, 04:30, ghdvo...@yahoo.com wrote:

so, here it is neither image, nor hidden.

I spent some time looking for a way to change the displayed addy, and saw google posts that said no change is possible, and found directions to change it that didnt work. The main reason I ask is I saw a selection on my screen, in the user setting....somewhere that was for changing email addys, Most of the addys that have omitted ends are not too hard to figure out. Strange thing was one of the thread posters sent a reply directly to my email!

two days ago I posted in the google group acad.... for my first ever post, Today, my very clean email box that has never recieved junk mail, had 2 spams in it. If You ever post to google, make sure you code your email addy in the google group settings, I couldnt figure out how to do it before I made my post. makes me mad as......

Gai! your a google expert, how do you get your email off your profile? I am not going back, but I just looked at my profile and I've been "checked out' 6 times Thanks

James,
Do A Save as on the original acad file, Keep the original, original.
edit the new file and get rid of the stuff you wont be needng, like lot dimensions, notes, etc.
Open a fresh SU screen, select import, and select the file.
after it is in Su and saved, use Weld to connect the topo segments into each topo line, and while you are selecting those segments and get tired of missing the selection, the SelectionMemory2 ruby us right on.
After all your topo lines are welded, move them in the blue axes your intended distance.
after the topo is elevated use smoove to get the skin.
When you have site objects to transfer to the topo, leave them at work plane (flat) and project them up to the topo surface.
You can project the building from below or take the footprint above and stamp it to the surface.
HTH

Very Cool, I wish to extend to you my sincerest and highest expression of Congratulations. You are well on your way to the 'Field of Dreams'. (there should be a crowd of smilies doing the waVe here)
You might be right about perfection, but we try...

LOL! Tom's marriage counsel and therapy, will color your world...perfectly! you are in a unique business aren't you? selling the dream...sell on.

Good Work Didier, and thanks for the show and tell. The possibilities are quite extensive.

I like that Juliette balcony. I am working on one too.

mk11,
I found my quickest work thru was to place a line from the exterior centerpoint of the opening that was above the floor plane down (blue) to the floor, this was my pick point for dimensioning. Mostly I deleted them at the next ISO view, but if you place them in their own layer, you can use them again.

I like the dimensioning capabilities of SU. It is extremely flexible,stable and easy to modify, and with a little technique modification on my part it is quite easy to dimension a plan to my tolerances.
Regards,

if you could get the camera lens to take perspective off, and make a straight on photo, without distortion.

I attempted this yesterday. I took a pic of a 24x36 and loaded it in SU and scaled it. there seemed to be some fish eye going on. The drawings I was working with were the hvac engineers colored pencil layouts over my plan and the get it scanned in color pretty ridiculous, even when I didnt want it printed, but just emailed. $8 per page.
it seems that to scan in color and email shouldnt be any huge difficulty or expense, but a camera device would be nice.

Luckily, I got all my layers to stick, by using the notepad technique. I didn't have to add entities to each layer.

The cube will help you too. When you touch the compass to separate faces of the cube you get different rotations available. Green compass spins it on the Green axis, red compass spins it on the red etc. See the attach.

Edit, lost the attach, glad you figured it out...

@unknownuser said:

You can have different 'layers' lists to suit different stages of your work, justas you can have different templates or styles for different types of modelling

Now that's COOL!... Thanks for your help

The layer list that is made in Notepad ie: newlayerlist.layers.txt , goes in the Templates folder? Then you rename without the .txt, then use the utility and select import.... oh yueah baby, that works, thanks