First try thoughts

[Anonymous]

I took a look at this software as something a person could use to do a quick sketch that could then be brought into AutoCAD or Revit. Something that would bridge the transition of paper to CAD. Alas, it is a fail as far as I can see. The fact that it only draws a single line means that you are drawing to the center of a wall. This means that you cannot bring this into AutoCAD or Revit without a lot of fooling around. Fooling around that more or less equals the fooling around you do with a paper sketch. (toilets and cupboards in the middle of the wall, etc.). I'll keep my eyes open in case this software improves, but it's pretty useless for anything other than a hobbyist.

[avto]

I’m sorry to hear your first impressions on Freestyle.
Could you please provide your sample drawing in Freestyle, which you had troubles bring in AutoCAD (please also specify the version of AutoCAD, 2011, 2010, etc)

Regards,
Avto Chachava, Autodesk Product Support

[crounsl]

hi -

From your post it sounds very much like you expected to see a tool for automatically creating a double line representing a wall thickness. We have had a lot of other users request this feature and it is definitely something that is in consideration for a future release.

We have had a number of users who were able to successfully use the single line too to show wall thickness. In many cases this is achieved by adjusting the grid paper so that you can easily draw walls of the correct thickness. For example, if you want to represent a 4" wall thickness, you can set your grid increments to 4".

Thanks for posting your feedback. This really helps us prioritize features for future releases.

Lisa

Lisa Crounse
Product Manager - AutoCAD Freestyle

[Anonymous]

When I start a new house design, the first thing I have to do is set up the house on the lot. Draw the property line and then the walls at the correct setback. This is to the outside of the wall of course. (Actually this is my boss drawing all this on paper.) Now comes the floor plan which is constrained by Floor Area Ratios and other by-laws. We deal with several municipalities, some of which calculate the floor area to the outside of the wall and others that calculate to the inside of the wall. Floor areas are very important so you have to be able to measure them accurately and having a single line will just confuse the issue.
I am looking for a simple to use program that I can set my boss up with so that we can leverage his work into AutoCAD or REVIT without having to totally redraw it every time. Having a single line that represents the inside and the outside of the wall at the same time will just not work. I suppose you could go around and draw both lines, but without an offset command this could get tedious. My boss is very very fast with pencil and paper, so a program that feels slow and awkward is not going to cut it. I may just load Freestlye on his computer and see what happens.
Another thing that is going to be a frustration, is if you are drawing a wall then want to place a window, it will be drawn with the line weight of the wall. A match property command might ease the pain of that.
Another problem that will surface is when we have a lot with an unusual or complicated property line. To use Freestyle it would be necessary to redraw the property line instead of simply using the CAD survey (since you cannot import CAD files).
I will give it another try, but there are lots and lots of problems. For instance:

How do you set the scale to a specific scale regardless of the paper size?
How do you print a PDF?
How do you measure area?
How do you send to back or bring forward?

The program has some potential but right now it lacks too many important features to be very useful to me.

J. Feldman

[crounsl]

Thanks for the clarification on the double line functionality. That helps was a we consider how to approach that issue in the application.

To your other questions:
- For the property line, you can open a DWG from AutoCAD or Revit and use it as an underlay in Freestyle. In your use case, you could start by opening the DWG and then just start drawing over it. There is a lot more information about working with DWG files in the attached paper.

- You can print a PDF by going to the "Save As" menu which has an option to create a PDF.

- To send an object backward or bring forward - we have an option for this in the right-click menu. Just select the object that you want to move, and then right click and you will see something called "Draw Order" which has a sub-menu for send backward and bring forward.

- As for match properties, setting the scale regardless of paper size, and a measure area tool - these are all features that are on our customer wishlist. I will log your requests for these as that helps us prioritize features for inclusion in future releases.

We really appreciate your feedback as it helps us better understand how people are using the application. We have not had much feedback from people using the "Open DWG" functionality so please let us know what you think if you give it a try.

[Anonymous]

I think you can make it. Firstly, scan your paper into computer and generate a pdf file. Then download a pdf to dwg converter, after conversion, you can edit the paper in autocad.

I strong recommend "PDF to DWG converter", click the site http://www.autodwg.com/pdf-to-dwg-converter/download.htm and download the stand-alone version. Hope this would help.