What I've learned about Impression so far

[Anonymous]

Greetings,

I have been using the trial version, watched the tutorials, read many of the documents on line and seen the one live presentation.

The key thought I have is that to be successful in using Impression, the AutoCAD drawing needs to be set up correctly for layer use. I have tried to bring in several floor and site plans prepared for preliminary presentation work for my clients. None of these drawings worked even marginally well from a layers standpoint.

None of the tutorials or live presentation directly touch on how an AutoCAD drawing would best be setup to use in Impression. There are certainly a number of conclusions that can be drawn by watching of Impression works, but I feel like this is only a start.

If the concept that AutoCAD drawings need to be set up a specific way with regards to linework and layers is true, then I find the use of Impression to be very limited as part of the workflow that a drawing goes through in an architectural office. Impression seems to require that all areas on a particular layer that are to be filled need to be closed either by lines or (as suggested in one of the tutorials) by polylines.

Two approaches for a 2D drawing that come to mind are:

1) Create a series of lines or polylines around each area that needs to be filled and place areas that are to be rendered the same on the same layer. If you look at the elevation or floor plan you want to prepare for Impression that means enclosing each unique fill area entirely even if it shares common lines from other fill areas that are different.

2) Evaluate your floor plan or elevation as to what filled areas will be in front of one another. If your whole building has a brick facade, then first create a polyline that encompasses then entire profile of the building and put it on layer brick. Then choose the next major fill area that is immediately in front of the brick surfaces. Say there are some major glazing areas broken up by numerous mullions. Create a polyline that encloses all the contiguous window spaces and put those on layer called glazing. Now create polylines that define the mullions that need fills and put that on the mullions layer.
And so on and so on....

What these two approaches suggest is that the layering system needs to be set up just to work with Impression.
Layer standards that most firms use are set up for a number of purposes that deal with management of information, sharing information with other disciplines, appearance of the drawings when plotted and others. None of these layer standards are usually setup to allow for the approach that Impression dictates.

I like Impression, and feel it's greatest strenth lies in it's use of layers. Using Impression as a program to simply pick an area on the screen and drop a fill in puts it back in the class of any Photoshop type program that most of us have been using for (dare I say) decades.

I look forward to hearing some other users thoughts.

Jeff Waymack
ASPEN Computer Graphics
206 634-0849

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

Thank you very much for your comments! My name is Yan and I am one of the product designer for Impression. We set up Impression so you can work in different ways. One way is to do what you suggest - create layers in AutoCAD with closed shapes and polylines for all of your fills and then just drop a fill style onto the layers in Impression. The way we recommend working is to bring in your dwg-file as is and create all of your fills in Impression. The recommended workflow is to create a new layer for each fill and then use the area fill tool (paint bucket) to create your fill objects directly in Impression (no closed shapes or polylines required). Alternatively, you can just drag a fill style into any closed area on the canvas and the area will automatically fill.
If you create separate layers for each fill style, you can easily update your fills later by dragging a different style onto those layers.
I'd be interested to hear how you feel about this alternative workflow or if you have any other comments. We're trying to make the best possible application for you - our customers, so you're feedback really counts!

Thanks,
Yan

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

Thank you very much for your comments! My name is Yan and I am one of the product designer for Impression. We set up Impression so you can work in different ways. One way is to do what you suggest - create layers in AutoCAD with closed shapes and polylines for all of your fills and then just drop a fill style onto the layers in Impression. The way we recommend working is to bring in your dwg-file as is and create all of your fills in Impression. The recommended workflow is to create a new layer for each fill and then use the area fill tool (paint bucket) to create your fill objects directly in Impression (no closed shapes or polylines required). Alternatively, you can just drag a fill style into any closed area on the canvas and the area will automatically fill.
If you create separate layers for each fill style, you can easily update your fills later by dragging a different style onto those layers.
I'd be interested to hear how you feel about this alternative workflow or if you have any other comments. We're trying to make the best possible application for you - our customers, so you're feedback really counts!

Thanks,
Yan

[Anonymous]

wow, thanks for watching this NG Schobey, any time we can hook up with the designers at Adesk, good things will happen.
I am wondering if the impression team understands that setting up closed plines ahead of time is a time killer. The
thing I love about impression is it finds those closed areas so well.
If we could hatch the areas in acad easily, impression probably would not sell, we would just use acad.

So this creates a problem, if only impression can detect the closed areas, how do make a drawing update that info?
It seems to me that a method of round tripping data is needed.

Every single person I have shown impression to have asked "can I get the hatches back into acad?".
That tells you something, if you give us that ability, you will kill two birds with one stone, the birds are
1) you sell more impression seats just for its ability to make hatches easily for acad.
2) you make a method for us to get those closed plines back in acad, where we can update them if needed. Keep in mind
we will not generally have to update all of them, so its not bad updating a few by hand. If acad chokes on making the
plines, we just make new ones with impression.

So that ability to make closed plines for acad is something I would think hard about if I were developing impression.
Its ok if the closed plines are not accurate to 16 sig figs, we need something about as accurate as a pdf made at 400
dpi. Those look bad up close but fine when plotted.
thx


Schobey <>
|>Jeff,
|>
|>Thank you very much for your comments! My name is Yan and I am one of the product designer for Impression. We set up Impression so you can work in different ways. One way is to do what you suggest - create layers in AutoCAD with closed shapes and polylines for all of your fills and then just drop a fill style onto the layers in Impression. The way we recommend working is to bring in your dwg-file as is and create all of your fills in Impression. The recommended workflow is to create a new layer for each fill and then use the area fill tool (paint bucket) to create your fill objects directly in Impression (no closed shapes or polylines required). Alternatively, you can just drag a fill style into any closed area on the canvas and the area will automatically fill.
|>If you create separate layers for each fill style, you can easily update your fills later by dragging a different style onto those layers.
|>I'd be interested to hear how you feel about this alternative workflow or if you have any other comments. We're trying to make the best possible application for you - our customers, so you're feedback really counts!
|>
|>Thanks,
|>Yan
James Maeding
Civil Engineer and Programmer
jmaeding - at - hunsaker - dotcom

[Anonymous]

In response to James...

Your comment about Impression "1) you sell more impression seats just for its ability to make hatches easily for acad" brings up to me the question of how Impression is perceived. I look at Impression as a stand alone program that takes DWG files and allows you to render them. In the statement of above, James is suggesting that Impression could be used as an add-on the AutoCAD as a means to import fills from Impression. Two thoughts come to mind in this...

1) If Impression is perceived as an add-on to AutoCAD, then the pricing seems too high. Most add-on (or plug-in) software I have purchased for major software programs runs anywhere from $25 to $150. Yes, I have seen some add-on programs that cost more, but if they perform only one group of tasks, that's too high a price for me.

2) I'm not sure what hatches James want's to bring back into AutoCAD. Impression deals with fills that are aimed at duplicating various painting techniques. With the great flexiblitiy in creating fills Impression has, I could see how some of the fills could be looked at as being hatches. If the only reason to buy Impression were to import hatches into AutoCAD, the price tag of $500 seems to much.

Thanks for everyone's input!

Jeff

[Anonymous]

James,

Thanks for your suggestions - we currently don't support round-tripping into AutoCAD, but we will certainly take your suggestion into consideration. We do have a feature called "Update CAD geometry" which allows you to update your CAD geometry in Impression after things have changed in the original dwg-file. We have many rendering effects in Impression that AutoCAD does not support, so we suggest that you print/publish your renderings directly from Impression and update the imported linework as your AutoCAD base file progresses.

Thanks,
Yan

[Anonymous]

Jeff,

Impression is definitely a stand alone application, not an add-on to AutoCAD. Creating fills is only one of the many things Impression can do. It is a complete rendering package that allows you to quickly turn your AutoCAD line work into something that can be presented to a client.

Thanks,
Yan

[BIMologist_]

I think the one and only best way I have found is that you do need to do a lot of prep work still, the tutorial is nice and cool, but it NEVER touches on that ffact that you do need prep work. The layer system needs to be there, the closed plines must mbe there for it to be used effectively. I tried the other way and let it search for closed areas and it just went to a CRAWL.

[Anonymous]

Naumanmy,

I work in an architectural/interiors office as you do. And I have been working towards developing a 'methodology that allows us to quickly incorporate impression effects into drawings that are constantly evolving in Autocad. And I share some of your frustrations in regards to the layering and the amount of prep work required in Autocad in order to get appropriate results in Impression.

I'm trying to arrive at a method in which I do not rely on any shading being applied via the area fill tool in Impression. As the moment we start making additions/alterations in Impression we have begun to compromise one of the most important assets of Impression - it's ability to interface directly with Autocad drawings and thus incorporate the constant changes that are a part of the normal workflow in architectural projects.

At this point I find that it is most advantageous to use one of two approaches:

1. When a project is very early in it's process to assume that the drawings are essentially 'throw aways' that will change so many times before they are complete that it is a waste of time to do much to them in Autocad to 'format' them. In this case I am taking the approach of: all linework created in autocad and all fills manually applied in Impression. These drawings are not typically highly detailed and the impression fills at this point are fairly simple. Block substitutions are extremely powerful and encouraged.

2). At some point in the process - as the design of the project progresses and we have reason to believe that we are reaching a point in which the drawings might become more 'reusable' from version to version I make the leap to creating closed polylines in Autocad and to format the drawings layers appropriately such that when the drawing is imported into Impression all of the fills are automatic. In this second stage I assume that NO work will be done in impression other than layer organization, style assignments and block substitutions.

I find this overall method is working well for now. And hope that as Impression improves to be able to further streamline the process.

Because my office does use a very standardized layer configuration I am also working towards making a few tweaks to our layer structure that will further support working with Impression. I don't see anyway around it as we are suddenly requiring our Autocad drawings to perform a completely different function in terms of working primarily in an environment based on fills as opposed to our old ways in Autocad which are very line based.

I have a couple of comments/suggestions for you that might help.

First, in order for impression to fill an area when importing from Autocad you do not have to have a closed polyline. Merely and area that is enclosed by lines.

Second, Impression does incorporate a 'gap tolerance' feature just as Autocad does. So it will fill areas bounded by lines that not 'perfectly joined'. You can set the gap tolerance tool by right clicking on the 'fill bucket' icon on the impression tool bar.

And last, before you give up on Impression I wanted to mention the second most important aspect of the software to me - the BEAUTIFUL results that I've not seen accomplished by any other software. For an example look at the gallery, under 'architectural interiors' to see a plan created completely in impression for a presidential suite I'm designing in India. I don't know any other software that can accomplish this result.

And the best part is - when the client needs a wall moved or another adjustment made I can recreate the entire rendered plan almost automatically.

I hope this helps.

Greg