3d trees

[JamesMaeding]

I have been doing a project where we get tree layouts as blocks, then elevate to the project surface, then redefine to make 3d trees.

Works great, and shows in 3d dwf or navisworks fine, but what is the state of the art for 3d trees from Autodesk's point of view?

What about lamp posts, we do those too.  I can solid model them all day, but now looking at adding little lights in them.

I have not done renderings much before, but I played with the render palette the other day and got decent results.

I wonder if pulling my model into 3ds max would choke it, or be easy to do.  I bet it has nicer rendering...

[tcorey]

Have you looked at Civil View, the free tool that comes with the Infrastructure Design Suite Premium? It includes lots of utility items and plants that are specific to civil visualization.

[JamesMaeding]

I looked at the tool, and lets just say this page makes me sick:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=9950110

The marketing of Autodesk is not honest, but you have to have tried the tools to know this.

Then they just say "we are best in class"...and sweep it all under the carpet - after you have bought the software of course.

If not, I'm wondering what button should all us idiot engineers be pushing to get "instant visualizations".

Do I also get two if I act now, and do I also pay separate shipping and handling for the second item?

The name of Autodesk is beeing smeered by its own advertising.

[JamesMaeding]

BTW, if the tool is free, how do I get it without buying the suite?

Good suggestion, not picking on that, just wondering if i missed the link to get it separate.

[AllenJessup]

I don't think Autodesk gets it. Are there any Engineering firms with money to burn? In the Northeast it's still lay-offs left & right and shortened work weeks if you are working.

Allen

[JamesMaeding]

The Autodesk people I know are really sharp and amiable.  They are the kind of people i would like to work with at H&A.

They do know how businesses are suffering, but that would only affect things like pricing, which we did see product costs go down.

They may not bring up the topic a lot in their marketing, but the real people involved do get it.

How the marketing works at Adesk, I will never understand.  They seem to think we forget everything each new year.

The whole "DOT's are choosing C3D" is way overblown so far.  DOT's are not requiring much, and commonly allow land xml for alignments and surfaces.  Most I have talked to do not even require the design data to be submitted, just cad drawings.

I think the bigger problem is the Autodesk teams need to spend some money surveying how real work gets done at real companies.  I am seeing places advertise "full" use of civil 3d, but they actually pull their data back to LDT for various operations.

Or they explode callouts as soon as they are placed, to kill the dynamicness that also destroys your plans if not tightly managed.

It is that fragility, and how C3D objects are shared that pose a major problem to the Autodesk dream of dominating Civil.

I wish them the best but also know they need to listen to us a bit more and find solutions to these issues before making more and more corridor extensions and add-ons.  The C3D team does have to pursue sales though, and i am sure it pushes them in directions they prefer to do differently than their choosing.

[AllenJessup]

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@jmaeding wrote:

The Autodesk people I know are really sharp and amiable.

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I agree. The people who work directly with the software are great. It's the corporate I question. The first year things started to go sour is also the first year I saw much more restrictions on Subscription and getting back on if you missed a year. It looked to me as if they had realized that people would have a harder time meeting the Subscription fees and were trying to scare us in to not even thinking of missing a year.

Over the past 4 years we've dropped our subscription 3Dmax and dropped half of our Civil 3D and Raster Design licenses. If prices went down during that time I must have blinked and missed it. Our bill has been higher each year for the same mammoth of licenses.

I know it's not Autodesks fault that we don't have the money to pay for their product. But I've been working with AutoCAD since R8 and I know if I can't make the Subscription fees this year. It will be the last time I see a new release. That has to do with where I work as well as the Autodesk fees.

Allen

[JamesMaeding]

All I can say is I now minimize the use of Autodesk verticals.

Every time you depend on one, you suffer through a lot of things that need fixing.

I do not see clients requiring C3D for a long time, as they know real companies struggle with it.

Honestly, I do not see much requirement for even landxml data for alignments and profiles.

The agencies out there seem happy with the "dumb" cad files.