Thinking about getting a Cad program for my I Mac so I can make presentation drawings and perhaps full scale layouts for building cabinets and such. Any opinions or first hand knowledge?
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I like Vectorworks. It's pretty user friendy CAD that runs really well on a Mac. The cool thing about vectorworks is that it has a really good 3D modeling plugin called Renderworks that can do some incredible photorealistic modeling, which could really begon to come in handy on the presentation drawing end of things or doing cabinet layout.
You can learn the program quickly and then spend years perfecting the 3d stuff.
Basiclly, it's great for drafting working drawiings but the software, is also geared twoard having the capability for professional architects to use it to produce all of their presentation drawings and their construction documents using it.
Ane of course, the standard answer is to do a search on the topic, it's been discussed once every two weeks or less.
Do you guy's have any examples of stuff you created on the CAD you ca show me?
Vectorworks. Four years later, still learning. Latest version adds some good stuff for me, including the human figures and the vegetation. Makes the result more realistic. Drafting capabilities are top notch. Don't underestimate the learning curve on any CAD. The key is deciding what you need before you invest the energy into buying/learning anything. Even the best and even the cheapest is a waste of time if it's not what you need.
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Edited 11/19/2006 12:40 pm ET by CloudHidden
Sketchup for Mac cannot be beat. Try it for free from Google.
Yes, Sketchup is great. I discovered it last weekend & used it to design an addition. You can use it together with Google Earth to capture an image of your building site terrain. Incredibly, the spy in the sky sees my footbridge and asparagus patch! Very blurry at close-in resolution, but it seems to get the grade about right.Once you import the terrain model, you can move your structure in 3 dimensions on the site, even viewing the foundation or basement from below ground level. You can also see shadow effects for whatever date, time, and compass orientation you set.I tried to import a CAD drawing of a prefab staircase into the program, but it seems to be limited in the variety of 3D CAD formats it can use. Maybe not (I don't know anything about CAD for engineering).
Edited 11/18/2006 5:16 pm ET by tom21769
Powercadd is an excellent 2-d mac program. Easy to learn, great user group. No 3-d capabilities, though.
Vectorworks is pretty much the 'standard' for pro-level CAD work on Macs.
And yea, sketchup is great...though I wouldn't really call it CAD software in the traditional sense (for drawing blueprints).
I also use Vectorworks, and like it. It has a lot of flexibility with it's organization and set up, and the 3d is great. It also can import sketchup files (as well as autocad). It is also in active development and each update improves the product. That said, there is always something to learn, much like carpentry.
The product you should get will depend on what you are going to use it for.