How are you rendering 2d drawings?

[Ged_Trias]

How are people rendering 2d drawings in autocad? Are you solid hatching? Exporting as PDF's to Photoshop or Illustrator? Do people still render 2D drawings any more?

Just curious how people are doing this these days. Just went through a DWG to Photoshop process and found it excruciating, Isolating layers for line work, exporting pdfs and re compositing it in Photoshop just to color.

Thanks,

[rculp]

The only person I know still rendering 2D drawings uses colored pencils.  They look great, takes hours and hours of production time, but looks great.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

show an image with the final result you want to achieve, then we can post our ideas. Reason behind is that the type of colorization and quality to be seen as final result can differ a lot from person to person.

- alfred -

[Ged_Trias]

I'm interested in fast techniques. How would you color a site plan?

[pendean]

What are you calling "rendering" exactly? HATCH is not "rendering" to most of us.

[Alfred.NESWADBA · Accepted solution]

Hi,

>> I'm interested in fast techniques. How would you color a site plan?

Thank you for these samples!

To do that with AutoCAD needs a lot of work or an application for landscape design.

With a lot of AutoCAD knowledge and building up a library of such plants, of images being used as replacement for hatches and some edit tools might bring you in the situation that you can do that with AutoCAD and your library, but also creating this library needs some time (a lot of time).

You may look through these search results >>>click<<< to find some 3rd party developer with applications for your AutoCAD.

- alfred -

[gotphish001 · Accepted solution]

I was going to do what you want but we ended up not needing it or at least not now. My plan was to make a pdf of the site plan and then color it in illustrator. I watched lots of videos. You need to use the illustrator live paint feature. You need to copy the line work onto more than one layer so you can live paint one which kind of freezes it so you can't edit it. The extra copy is so you can make changes then go into the live paint layer and be able to match it up to the changes. 

I'm going to link some videos and pages I bookmarked. I'm not sure which one you'll need exactly, but I was trying to do basically what you are trying to do. My bookmarks are pretty organized, so if I have something bookmarked in a folder it's probably good stuff pertaining to the folder heading. These are probably all worth watching.  I'm also including the link to Terry Whites youtube page. He has tons on videos for adobe. You can filter them to just show illustrator videos. As I never used illustrator before these were my stepping off point. He's pretty good at explaining things as he shows you. If you never used illustrator I'd watch his videos on it first. The second link is some general illustrator stuff that I thought would help me produce good looking drawings. The last 2 are on the live paint. The third one being the work flow you want to use and the last is everything you can do with it.

Terry White

http://blog.graphicstock.com/graphic-design-tutorials/50-adobe-illustrator-tutorials-for-designers/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIc-lPerzBg

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/live-paint-groups.html

[Ged_Trias]

I'm sure there are instances where you'll want to throw some kind of color on a drawing, a floor plan a colored elevation. or something like that. That is what I have come to know as a form of rendering.  When you want to throw color on a drawing, how are you doing it? What are you doing when you really want to make a 2d plan look nice as in the examples I've included previously.

[Ged_Trias]

Thanks for the input. It looks like the Adobe pathway is almost the only game in town at this point. I think it would be awesome if there was a program that was especially tuned to the needs of CAD users who have to color drawings and also interfaced with Adobe products easily and painlessly.

Oh wait. There was.....

Autodesk Impression

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dubldnOk-Ko

[pendean]

WE do it outside of AutoCAD: AutoCAD is not a presentation-quality output tool for 2d drawings like you posted.

Autodesk Impression was good, but no one cared to buy it or subscribe to it, so it died due to lack of customer interest.

[strawberry12]

FWIW, I generally import a drawing into photoshop. Here's an example. I've added a gradient mask to try to emphasise which bit is autocad and which is photoshop (in case it isn't obvious)

[Ged_Trias]

Thanks for the example! Are you bringing in just a PDF or JPG of the entire drawing or are you bringing in the individual layers as separate JPG's? A number workflow examples I've seen bring in each layer as a separate JPG into the PSD file.

[Ged_Trias]

You could color a floor plan inside of AutoCAD, it just wouldn't be to that level of quality without a significant expenditure of time. An expenditure of time that a program like Impression would have cut dramatically, whether you were using Impression itself or going out to an Adobe product.

I know you can color a drawing. I'm assuming people still do that even today. So, to the point of my original question, how do you do it outside of AutoCAD. Photoshop? Illustrator? Are you importing each layer as a jpeg? I'm interested in techniques now that Impression is all but unusable with the current version of AutoCAD.

[strawberry12]

Generally, just a single PDF. Although I will sometimes bring trees, shadows,  structure, grids, hatching, etc, in on separate layers - it just depends on the complexity of both the source material and the end result which we want to convey. In the example document, there's basically just one line drawing. The shadows for the building were actually exported as a graphic from sketchup. The shadows for the cars are just drawn in photoshop.

Very occasionally, I will build up layers of hatched colour in autocad - it's tediously time-consuming, but it can produce a very nice effect - I'm not sure that I have an example to hand though.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Ged_Trias,

This has always been a tricky problem to solve. I really enjoyed using Impressions like others have mentioned. But, since it is not really an alternative at this point you might consider using Sketchbook.  I found a great tutorial on how to use for landscape architecture so this might be quite applicable. @Victoria.Studley also gave me this link which looks quite interesting. I haven't explored all the content but it looks like it might be promising.

I have also tried the PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign route but that can become quite laborious.

I hope this is something that might help your workflow. Please post back with your impression (excuse the pun) on this as possible solution.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[pendean]

We use Illustrator and/or Photoshop, it depends on the size of the image, and quality of the presentation needed, complexity and so on. Both of these programs do require experience to use most efficiently.

We use these tools because we have had them for a long time, if you are just starting out something less complex like Sketchbook or free/lower cost options may be all you need.

Looking at the samples you posted you might require a higher level of quality than Sketchbook can offer alone, I find it's output lacking "pop" if you know what I mean.

[Ged_Trias]

John - thanks for the link and the reply. Not to put to fine a point on it, that workflow is horrifying. He's actually tracing and coloring by hand? I thought the computer was supposed to make our lives easier? That is no different that how things were done 25 years ago when I was in school except I'm not getting high off the marker fumes. What is his total elapsed time in that rendering? It's probably short(er) than by hand, due to the computer but in comparison to what Impression was capable of, I see no improvement and a huge step back. Sketchbook, is good for what it is as a way to duplicate certain types of media, but it doesn't dynamically automate things the way Impression was capable of especially in relation to DWG's. That is what set it apart from Photoshop or Illustrator. It also didn't shut off that Adobe workflow by allowing you to save to layered .PSD files. I'd think that would be useful even to the most die-hard Photoshop renderer. Sketchbook is good for the Industrial Design and other Concept Design workflows, but is in my opinion totally ill suited to an AEC workflow where you are working with lot of AutoCAD based drawings and have need to update and revise them. Whoever sold Sketchbook as a useful tool for AEC workflows had no real understanding of what really is needed in the AEC realm. 

I get that for some inexplicable reason you're not supporting it any more, but how much work would it be to make it work for the most current versions of AutoCAD or Windows? There was a previous comment about Impression dying because of lack of customer interest. How about making it an App? Make sure it works for the current versions and OS and sell it for $10 bucks. No other improvements!  I have to think anyone who needs to color an AutoCad drawing beyond hatching would drop $10 bucks just to get layered .PSD files from a dwg.

I'm probably yelling into a hurricane here, but Autodesk has continually sold itself on making what we do easier and better, and for a short time there, you had something that did. Please consider once again supporting this important part of the AEC workflow and making our working lives easier and better once again.

[Ged_Trias]

Thanks for the reply - How much time are you typically putting into a rendering?

[RobDraw]

This seems so old school to me. There must be a good 3D option for accomplishing this.

Why don't you get with the times and go 3D?

[john.vellek]

Hi @Ged_Trias,

I would love to see an app of sorts too. You might consider adding this to the Idea Station (I will vote on it if you let me know when you do).

You are also welcome to contact the product team directly. If you have additional comments specific to the software or its functionality for future consideration, please use the Product Feedback page. How to provide feedback on Autodesk products goes into more detail.

Another great option is to participate in the AutoCAD Customer Council. This is an opportunity for our customers to partner with the AutoCAD development team to improve future releases of AutoCAD by giving continuous feedback on ideas, designs, and early builds.
In order to get involved email autocad.beta@autodesk.com or autocad.lt.council@autodesk.com