Residential drafter trying to select new cad software

[Anonymous]

So I recently got hired at a residential construction company/custom cabinet shop.  It is a buddies business and he has big dreams for his companies.  We currently are using autocad 2012 lt, and just doing all the drafting with it.  In the next few months we will be opening up a new office, and in the office we will have a showroom for our clients, including an area with a big 80" tv along with 4 other 32" tvs that we can show people their house on before it is built.  We want to be able to pull up say, the house on one screen, pull up the cabinets on another.  Maybe pictures of another house that they really liked the look of on another screen, etc.  We would love to be able to go on a 3d photorealistic (or as close as we can get) walkthrough of the house.  So that we can show our clients what they are getting and sell them on additional features that they were iffy on to start with.  

Our problem is, we don't know which software to switch to.  We really would like to avoid spending 20 grand on 3 design suites for the 2 drafters and main "display" computer.  So first question is if we were to buy 2 copies of revit lt (for the drafting) and then 1 copy of the suite (specifically for 3ds max and showroom) for the display computer, would we be able to make that work for what we want to do? 

2nd question, Is the building design suite really the best option for us at this time? Will it give us better effects than some of the other softwares out there that are cheaper, like Sketchup, softplan, and a handful of others I've seen?  I've also heard some talk about people using Unreal Engine 4 for some home renderings recently since it is now free.  Anybody with any experience in that?

3rd and probably most important question.  Just how long is it going to take us to learn this stuff?  And any suggestions on learning it?  We only have a very basic understanding of Autocad LT at this point.  The little that I've played around with Revit LT it feels like its going to be quite a large learning curve to truly understand well.  And then when it comes to learning 3dsMax and the programs you need to successfully create a photo quality rendering we are pretty intimidated.  Once we do learn these programs pretty well, just how long is it going to take us to turn our normal revit drawing, into something like the picture I attached?  Because the ability to do that, is the reason we have decided that 3dsMax and revit are probably the way to go.  

Sorry for the long post, but appreciate any help you can give me.  Have a great day 🙂

Jeremy

[Richard.Vivanco]

Hi.

Imho you have two options:

Try to focus only in revit at this moment.  In revit you can create your own familys for your cabinets, generate schedules, budgets, details, 3dviews, sections.  You can assign materiales, lights, and generate a virtual walkthrough too.

If you focus only in this content, the learning path is not too big.

Another option is to learn autocad 3D and 3dsmax.  You said that you have a little experience with cad.  You can create your 3D blocks for your cabinets, assign attributes to it, generate a database with code, description and price and finally extract the information to generate your budget.  Finally export your cad model into 3dsmax and assign material, lights, camera, and render it.  You can generate a panorama view in 3dsmax or try with a software like pano2vr to generate the 360°

Revit and 3dsmax are a very huge softwares,  for this time learn only what you need for your business.  

Cheers and good luck

[Anonymous]

Appreciate the advice.  And would love more from anyone else too.  As far as what you said, my only concern with Revit is that the walkthroughs that I have seen online (maybe there are better ones I haven't seen from revit???) basically look like something you could make in minecraft.  In other words they are pretty unimpressive.  I don't mean that to be offensive to anyone who specifically uses revit, because in a lot of applications that would be ideal.  You don't want to take the time to get something to a very high quality, and your clients are just interested in being able to mentally picture the building easier than just looking off of a set of 2d plans.  Unfortunately, our goal is to make a statement to our clients.  We want them to come in knowing that their house isn't built and to be taken aback by what their house is going to look like. That way, if they do decide there is something they don't like on it, we can change it right there, and not have to change it 3 months down the road when they go to look at the nearly completed house and they find something they don't like that they thought they were going to like.  With that being said though, Revit and 3dsMax are very huge softwares like you said, and one of the big things I'm trying to figure out is if this is even a plausible thing for our firm to be doing at this point.  

The thought about autoCAD 3d and 3dsMax is an interesting one, since we already feel at least somewhat comfortable with autoCAD LT.  My only thought there, is if we go and buy autocad3d and 3dsMax, we might as well buy the design suite because its just not that much more money.  I do think the advice of keeping it simple and only learning what we need for our firm is a good idea.  We had been thinking about even taking classes if we had to.  But, if we did that then we wouldn't just be learning architecture, we'd be learning how to design a fish, a roller coaster, space ship, all that kind of stuff too, and we just don't really need that sort of stuff hah.  

Jeremy

[dgorsman]

You know the phrase "How do you eat an elephant?".  You're trying to eat two: Revit and 3DSMAX.  Both are very complex programs, and take quite a bit of time to get working right.  Neither is something you can step into and get photo-real quality right out of the door.  Both programs also take a lot of time to get to a high-quality finished product.  The good news is once you get some experience you'll be able to walk those steps like it's second nature.

Revit *might* be overkill for your work, but only you can tell that.  Find a reseller and have them come in or visit them for product demos.  Also check on what they can provide in the way of training and technical support - you'll need both.

Not sure if I'm reading your posts right, but neither program is really suited for real-time walk-through.  What they produce are stills and movies.  You mentioned "Minecraft quality"images, but I can't comment on that without any kind of actual images.  There is some very impressive work out there from both Revit and 3DSMAX (hey, didja know "Johnny Nmemonic" was done with an early version of MAX?).  Those are the result of people with years of experience and a lot of hours put into the finished product.

The suites can be a good deal, even if you don't use everything.  Just so you know, the suite licenses aren't "1 AutoCAD + 1 3DSMAX + 1 Raster Design" etc.  When you purchase one suite license, only one person can run any of those products at a time.  If you have one person running AutoCAD and another running another product in the suite you'll need 2 licenses, three people = 3 licenses, and so on.

[PROH]

Hi. Seems you got a lot of elephants to eat in a very short time 🙂

Basically your can split your needs up in 2: 1) The construction part, and 2) The presentation/visualizing part.

From what you describe, it seems like the most urgent "new" thing to establish is the presentation part. So for a start you could focus on this area, and then later on decide how to develope the construction part. For the presentation part I think the shortest road would be to stay with AutoCAD LT and then use a 3D modeling software + some sort of real time software.

One setup could be SketchUp + Lumen RT, and another setup could be 3dsMaxDesign with Corona renderer. SketchUp + Lumen RT would give you the option for a "true" realtime walkthru, while 3dsMaxDesign + Corona renderer would give you the possibility for hi quality photo realism in almost real time (using the Corona Interactiv Renderer). There are of course many more options and combinations, but which one to chose realy depends on photo realism vs. realtime action. Check out Corona at www.corona-renderer.com

If you chose the Max route, then note the possibility to remotely control it from i.e. a labtop, or the possibility to install the same program on 2 computers - if you're only using one at a time.

Hope it helps

[Anonymous]

Most definitely seems like we have a bunch of Elephants to eat at this point (haha I've never heard that phrase before I love it).  As far as which one is most important at this point, actually I think being able to draft stuff is most important at this point due to something that I left out earlier.  My boss wasn't exactly the smartest when it came to purchasing Autocad LT 2012.  He was looking around online, saw it advertised by someone (I don't know who) for $800 and they told him it would work on as many computers as he wanted, he would just have to call them every time he wanted to load it on a new computer.  Well, his computer crashed and when he went to load it on a new computer that I built for him, the key obviously wouldn't work.  So we called and the phone number is disconnected, called autodesk and they don't recognize the serial number, so obviously there is nothing they can do for us either. So right now we are running on a trial of 2015 CAD LT.  And so the most important thing for us right now is to get on a real copy of whatever software we decide we are going to go with.  

That's why we are pretty serious about trying to see how many elephants we can eat at once.  If we are going to have to learn a new drafting software like Revit LT then now is the time, the new office/presentation room will not be finished until later this year (I'm guessing august/september) so that should give us some time to get comfortable with revit, sketchup, or softplan, and then start taking on 3dsmax, or Lumen RT.  I know its a pretty tough situation we are in, and I've already lectured my boss about making sure he knows the source that he is purchasing software from.  But that is all in the past now and we are trying to focus on the future.  

I'm going to be chatting in person with an autodesk representative that is going to be in town on Thursday.  And hopefully he can give me some more good suggestions.  One of the reasons I wanted to ask these questions in the forum is so that I could have more questions for him when I talk to him.  I needed to know what I needed to be asking him.  

Now one additional question, I feel like at this point we are leaning towards purchasing 2 copies of Revit LT for mine and my bosses computer, so that we can maintain our current work (we would get the version that comes with autocad LT as well for $1700 total per PC).  This would give us the ability to learn Revit LT with the option to fall back on Autocad LT when times get hectic and we just need to hurry through a design.  Once we get like 2 months away from moving into the new office I would order the parts and build the new computer for the showroom (would probably be a 6 core xeon cpu, 32gb ram with option of adding more, and either the new Titan X that is coming out or a quadro k4200).  Then we would buy the design suite for that computer.  I would spend the next 2 months learning and putting together a project through 3dsMAX using an existing Revit LT project that we have already finished (It would be nice to be able to display something to our builders on our grand opening even if it isn't the photo quality stuff that I've been seeing).  This is where I have the big question, is this something I'm going to be able to do with Revit LT?  I keep seeing people post on Revit and not Revit LT.  Should I be looking at Revit, and not Revit LT?  It was my assumption that on our drafting computers Revit LT would be just fine to use.  

Thanks again for all the help guys, its been educational, and intimidating when talking about the elephants haha.  Also greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my longer posts (I can get kind of long winded from time to time). 

Jeremy