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Own drag-n-drop content?

17 REPLIES 17
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Message 1 of 18
GilesPhillips
752 Views, 17 Replies

Own drag-n-drop content?

After the initial installation headache, first impressions are good.. well done so far 🙂

Is there an easy way to create my own content for the symbol libraries?

G
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max
17 REPLIES 17
Message 2 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Hi Giles,

Glad you are enjoying Project Cooper. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to create or add custom symbols to your symbols library, but we are planning to add more symbols in the near future. What type of symbols are you looking for?

Just out of curiosity, what kind of drawings are you working on with Project Cooper?

Thanks,
Yan
Message 3 of 18

That's a real shame.

My company works in the entertainment industry and there were a few areas I'd hoped to use this software:

Layout of production lighting in a theatre (spotlights, floods, pyro effects etc)
Design of equiment rack layouts (amplifiers, signal processing etc)
Layout of production facilities in a venue (speakers, staging, curtain tracks)
Layout of large site production equipment (generators, crowd control, tents & temporary structures)

These are all areas where we have a stock of hire equipment that we could have pre-drawn symbols for that our sales and technical design staff could then drop onto a page pretty much in front of the client.

We've tried this with Design review, but the precision and scaling is just to clunky and imprecise..

G
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max
Message 4 of 18
crounsl
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Glad to see that you were able to install. There is a workaround for custom symbol libraries - you could create a drawing with all of your symbols in it and just open that and copy and paste between drawings, but we all know that is not an elegant solution!

A few follow up questions:

For the type of work that you do, are the sheet sizes that we offer sufficient? Do you mostly print stuff out on a desktop printer?

And it sounds like the ability to create custom symbols is important to you, but also to be useful that you must be able to share these symbol libraries with others. Is this proprietary content that you would only want to share with your team or would you be willing to also share them with the world at large?

Lastly, do you think that you would want to share these files with people who use AutoCAD or other higher-end DWG based applications?

Again, glad that you got it and gave it a try!


Lisa Crounse
Sr. Product Manager
Message 5 of 18

> {quote:title=crounsl wrote:}{quote}
> Glad to see that you were able to install. There is a workaround for custom symbol libraries - you could create a drawing with all of your symbols in it and just open that and copy and paste between drawings, but we all know that is not an elegant solution!
>

You're right, it's not elegant, but it may be enough to convince my superiors that further road-testing is required..

> A few follow up questions:
>
> For the type of work that you do, are the sheet sizes that we offer sufficient? Do you mostly print stuff out on a desktop printer?

On site, favourite paper format is A3 as it's easily portable and not such a pain in the wind & rain, I think 'large format' (A2 ...A0) is good as an option, but those sizes would probably only be used on schematics. I suppose it's a case of drawing a distiction between the complexity of a drawing, and the skill required to create it - our schematics are occasionally complex, but could be drawn in Excel (and occasionally are!)

> And it sounds like the ability to create custom symbols is important to you, but also to be useful that you must be able to share these symbol libraries with others. Is this proprietary content that you would only want to share with your team or would you be willing to also share them with the world at large?

We'd love an opportunity to package up some of our popular products (along with easy order-codes) and distribute them on a CD or USB key at trade fairs and such - everybody loves free stuff- and free stuff that's useful is often fought over - especially if it was supported by a free (or cheap) easy-to-use platform with good support and upgrade path..

It wouldn't be much of an aid to our internal productivity, but it would be an excellent marketing tool, and possibly an avenue to bigger things, not to mention a good lever to help promote the software.

> Lastly, do you think that you would want to share these files with people who use AutoCAD or other higher-end DWG based applications?

Again the ability to share content would make for a good marketing tool, regardless of the format. However having similar content available for our own in house AutoCAD users would definitely be of benefit - however we do have a fairly extensive library already, though some of the contents we'd prefer to excercise a little more control over (manufacturing details of our internal products, for example).

I would imagine in a perfect world, a site plan concept would be sketched out by our customer-facing staff, and on approval sent to the design team to verify and turn into a 'real' drawing for co-ordination, approval and manufacture - thus the portability of the content would be vital in that direction.

> Again, glad that you got it and gave it a try!

Not a problem, if this input helps develop a product that's better for us, then everybody wins..

Giles
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max
Message 6 of 18
nvanlaar
in reply to: GilesPhillips

The blocks appear to be simple ACAD dynamic blocks. Is this the case? That's how they seem to behave and how they continue to work in ACAD. I think the ability to create custom block libraries is important. Why not enable some sort of drag 'n drop like ACAD palettes creation?
Message 7 of 18

Yep.

To chip in again, everyone at my company I've shown this software to has expressed interest, yet disappointment that it 'only caters for architects'

I've had very little luck convincing people to try copying from one 'source' drawing to their work, though part of the problem is getting an autocad dwg into a state that project cooper will accept.

Any further thoughts on opening up project cooper for custom content?

G
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max
Message 8 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Hi Gilles,

I can't make any promises but we are definitely considering adding some kind of support for creating and saving custom symbols. It sounds like that would be a 'must have' for you and your co-workers.

What if we made if possible to easily import blocks that were created in AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT and add it to your Symbols Library in Cooper. Would that be enough?

Thanks,
Yan
Message 9 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Hi Nick,

Great to see you trying out Project Cooper! You are correct - the symbols in Project Cooper are based on ACAD dynamic blocks. Do you think that if would be enough if we allowed you to import your AutoCAD blocks and turn them into Cooper symbols or do you think it's necessary that you can create your own custom symbols directly in Cooper?

If you don't mind me asking - how do you envision Project Cooper being used in your office?

Thanks,
Yan
Message 10 of 18

Hi Yan,

I appreciate promises are hard to make, however the custom aspect of this project is our own must-have (given we're not architects!)

Easy importing of existing AutoCAD block references would be a great feature, though I'd ask that once imported, it could easily be transferred to other installation.

That way I could create the imported content from our libraries (say with certain layer switched off) and distribute it. Rather than letting other users do it, perhaps slightly differently, and ending up with a somewhat chaotic set of non-standards.

I could probably supply some sample files if you want some non-architectural data to play with..

Giles
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max
Message 11 of 18
nvanlaar
in reply to: GilesPhillips

> {quote:title=yschober wrote:}{quote}
>
> What if we made if possible to easily import blocks that were created in AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT and add it to your Symbols Library in Cooper. Would that be enough?
>
That would be a great start. I think native ability to create blocks would be better (as long as they can contain the same dynamic elements as current cooper blocks/symbols).
Message 12 of 18
nvanlaar
in reply to: GilesPhillips

I see Cooper being used for real quick preliminary sketch work that perhaps someone other than an ACAD trained person could do, then pass on to me to detail and finalize a plan from. Or even better use a tablet and put something together really quick on a site visit and then bring it into the office to finish. (I don't currently have a tablet to test that ability, but it looks promising.) Customers often want to see something right there and then, but my hand sketching skills have always been lacking, this might fit what I need in that department.

I think importing ACAD blocks is a good idea, but what does someone do if they don't have ACAD? Is Cooper meant to be a companion, or a stand-alone? Is this going to be a subscription perk?

How complex can the blocks get?
Message 13 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Hi Gilles,

Thanks for the quick reply and yes, I would love some sample drawings if you don't mind sharing them with us (we'll promise to use them for internal purposes only).

My e-mail address is yan.schober@autodesk.com.

Thank you very much!

Yan
Message 14 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Thanks Nick - this is very helpful. Just like you suggested, Project Cooper is meant for someone that is not trained in CAD and doesn't need the full power of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. We actually expect that most of our users for Project Cooper will not have access to AutoCAD - but I could see a CAD manager (or AutoCAD power user) creating custom symbols in AutoCAD and then importing them into Cooper for the staff that is working with Project Cooper only.
Message 15 of 18
Anonymous
in reply to: GilesPhillips

"We actually expect that most of our users for Project Cooper will not have
access to AutoCAD"

Which is why I ask what would they do without access to ACAD. I think
something simple like what Impression uses for a block editor/creator would
be perfect (maybe do it onscreen rather than have it's own separate editor
window.

BTW-Project Cooper looks to be some sort of blend of Impression and AutoCAD
LT. Heavy Impression with an LT core... I like the UI so far. Very
intuitive, but the palettes take too much screen real-estate and the toolbar
at the top doesn't resize for smaller screens. This should be a good
program for netbooks, I would think. Any testing in that arena?

"yschober" wrote in message news:6296589@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Thanks Nick - this is very helpful. Just like you suggested, Project
> Cooper is meant for someone that is not trained in CAD and doesn't need
> the full power of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. We actually expect that most of
> our users for Project Cooper will not have access to AutoCAD - but I could
> see a CAD manager (or AutoCAD power user) creating custom symbols in
> AutoCAD and then importing them into Cooper for the staff that is working
> with Project Cooper only.

--
Nick
Message 16 of 18
yschober
in reply to: GilesPhillips

Not yet - but that's a good idea.

I agree with you on the palettes. We are working on a way to mitigate this problem. We are thinking about adding some way to easily collapse/expand all palette with a single click - do you think that this would fix the problem for you?

Thanks,
Yan
Message 17 of 18
Anonymous
in reply to: GilesPhillips

I think a palette hotkey/button would be ok, but auto-hide palettes better
(like ACAD's and many other program's palettes do), otherwise an extra click
is required.

What about the current button (next to print)? Why can't a simple click
hide/un-hide and the side arrow be used for individual palettes?

Are hotkeys/shortcuts going to be assignable? (not a big deal, but a nice
touch).


"yschober" wrote in message news:6296630@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Not yet - but that's a good idea.
>
> I agree with you on the palettes. We are working on a way to mitigate this
> problem. We are thinking about adding some way to easily collapse/expand
> all palette with a single click - do you think that this would fix the
> problem for you?
>
> Thanks,
> Yan


--
Nick
Message 18 of 18

> This should be a good
> program for netbooks, I would think. Any testing in that arena?

I'd like to echo that thought - all of our sales team use laptops, a few of them the 'mini' sort. As a company we've not bought into netbooks yet, but I can see them being popular with our people who are on the road a lot, I think the next round of hardware upgrades will see netbooks emerging.

G
ACad, MEP, Revit, 3DS Max

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