3D modelling for architecture - your preference

[AndresAhumada]

Max lover!

[squintnic]

i find it really unusual when people talk about the 'accuracy' of autocad vs max
we are making quicktimes and jpgs not building documentation....

[glorybound]

I don't know, sometimes MAX doesn't even snap accurately to anything.

i find it really unusual when people talk about the 'accuracy' of autocad vs max
we are making quicktimes and jpgs not building documentation....

[Franx]

I don't know, sometimes MAX doesn't even snap accurately to anything.

But it sort of mimics the inacuracies in real life constructions

To answer Tricky's question, I also start in Autocad, but only 2d plines then import in Max and start modeling from there. Been working in Autocad for over 25 years and 2D drafting is so superior on every front to the rudimentary 2D toolset Max offers but I really cannot imagine doing any 3D in there. I reckon it did get better in the last few versions though. And I got over Max's inacuracies longtime ago...

[flino2004]

if your working on characters, organic modeling you are fine with "close enough" but for architectural visualization you need to be accurate to represent your clients' vision.

[Neilg]

if your working on characters, organic modeling you are fine with "close enough" but for architectural visualization you need to be accurate to represent your clients' vision.

haha. if your copy of max is so inaccurate you're putting walls multiple feet from where they're supposed to be I think you've got some issues with your max install.

[tricky]

When working with complex architectural scenes, being accurate makes things much quicker in the long run, particularly when performing edits at some later date. Layering fudges on top of fudges on top of bodges on top of fudges makes for a messy model that is difficult to edit, especially if the model has to pass from one artist to another.

VVMs also demand a high level of precision.

[super gnu]

i agree.. its perfectly possible to be accurate to within a few mm on a building in max, even being a bit careless and eyeballing a lot of stuff. i struggle to see a situation where a few mm out is gonna affect an image or animation.

i use snaps, when they fail (which they of course do, im not defending max's poor snapping) i just zoom in a bit and do it unsnapped. in the cases where a) the snaps fail and b) i need it really accurate, i just zoom in as far as i can. not a big deal. in images with perspective, and animations even more, a bit of innacuracy is not noticeable, and as already noted, some tiny variations can even add to the realism.

[flino2004]

if something basic such as snap lines is not working well in max and you are constantly aligning things and snapping corners, etc ... I wouldn't waste my time trying to do it in max.
it's good to have the history of what are you doing but I don't need it most of time....stacking modifier, go thru all the selections, etc .... so many steps to me.

I worked for a big Architectural firm where I was the only one designing in Sketchup and the rest in Max... I got my projects done way faster than the other designer and eventually the company decided to use Sketchup as an standard tool and max only for renderings. exporting background from SU to Autocad / revit is simple and accurate as well.

another benefit is SU is very intuitive, in a week you can be in an acceptable level.

I use Autocad, revit, rhino and Sketchup for modeling so i

[super gnu]

hm, i dont doubt sketchup is fast, one thing i can say for sure though, is 95% of the sketchup models i receive need remodelling before i can use them, particularly for animation. im not sure if its how the tools work in sketchup, or just bad modelling practice, but they are *always* just full of double faces.

[Neilg]

hm, i dont doubt sketchup is fast, one thing i can say for sure though, is 95% of the sketchup models i receive need remodelling before i can use them, particularly for animation. im not sure if its how the tools work in sketchup, or just bad modelling practice, but they are *always* just full of double faces.

Most of that is from multiple people working on the same file - someone does landscape, someone does detail, someone does something else, they all have reference objects to keep themselves working in the correct places and nobody bothers to clean up the reference objects as they merge it all into one file. no matter what software they use, all reasonably sized architects do this. I get autocad drawings with overlapping lines, max files, rhino, whatever.

[flino2004]

hm, i dont doubt sketchup is fast, one thing i can say for sure though, is 95% of the sketchup models i receive need remodelling before i can use them, particularly for animation. im not sure if its how the tools work in sketchup, or just bad modelling practice, but they are *always* just full of double faces.

It is bad modelling practice for sure...this topic is about a visualization company asking preferences more modelling besides autoCAD then the staff will use whatever tool to get the model done to be imported into MAX.
As Neilg mentioned this the problem you are going to have when you get models from somebody else.

[glorybound]

Funny.. I double my price when I know I am getting a SU model.

hm, i dont doubt sketchup is fast, one thing i can say for sure though, is 95% of the sketchup models i receive need remodelling before i can use them, particularly for animation. im not sure if its how the tools work in sketchup, or just bad modelling practice, but they are *always* just full of double faces.

[alexworx]

All for max for me as well.

[mattclayton]

Full max here. We get a lot of CAD models and have CAD users in house however you need to consider the render speed advantages to having good clean mesh built in max to render from, especially with heavy scenes. I don't think I've ever had a good clean geometry from a CAD model, we rebuild it 99 times out of a 100.

As for precision and large scenes that's very dependent on good workflow i think. We have very little problem with max handling vast amounts of detail. Case in point is this project...

http://www.the-neighbourhood.com/wor...udies/victoria

This had several artists working on individual buildings to very high detail as we were doing aerials of the sites and close up detail facade shots, especially on the NOVA site. Xrefs are your friends!