Rendering Using Autocad R2009

Here is a render done using R2009. I'm quite happy with the quality-some may not be.
It was done using the Illuminated Sky Background option, which I'm finding makes life easy.

Rendering in Autocad R2009

May as well put out a positive YES for R2009 here.

R2009 has improved rendering over R2008 : To get a good rendering now, just type in
LIGHTINGUNITS, set it to 2. Apply your materials-if you use realistic shading while doing so, then you get feedback that you have applied the materials.

Turn on Full shadows, then Sun and illumination-sky. You can use the visualising tab on the ribbon-just seems easier than fishing around in menus or typing.

Select the your geographical region, time of day etc and then press render, using say 640x480.

You should be pleasantly surprised. Ok, so not everyone is into rendering....but if enough users start out using the above approach, I would anticipate a huge increase in rendering.

I'm no expert in all this, but it seems to me that this business of "final gather" is involved.
Usually this is set to auto, and sometimes to get it kicked into life you need to set it to ON.

The thing about "final gather" is that, when it is enabled, all the shadows which used to be black, now look a lot more realistic.

Once you get a nicer rendering, save it as a tiff file, I find a resolution of 2400 x 1800 quite good for nice sharp pictures. They can take a while though-15 minutes is normal.

I hope to be able to post a typical rendering of mine soon.

Blocks versus Lisps

Just plodding my way through one of my drawings today and a thought struck me: I've done this little thing before-a 75mm post with a plate on it's end and 2 x M12 bolt holes to fasten it to a nearby girt. (All in 3D of course)

In the past I have gone on about the need for blocks for every situation-but where does anyone get the time, or the inclination to be disciplined enough to organise a really comprehensive block library?

I am slightly organised now, and over the years the blocks have accumulated like dust in my computer. Maybe it is just that every situation appears to be unique, so things "need to be designed". This might be justifying our existence, or ego.

The other idea I had was that maybe someone (me? when I'm not busy???) would get on and write either in lisp or VBA, general types of lisps-for instance in the above example, you feel the need to do a plate on the end of a post: you initiate the routine and a dialog box comes up with all the variables, plus an option to auto-fill the variables. For instance you might choose a 75 square post: It would then offer up say 10mm as the plate thickness, and M12 as the bolt size and so on.

I'm not sure, but my gut feeling here is that a lisp routine would be better than a block, because the option would be there to change any of the variables before the thing is drawn.

Yet another thought:

Maybe this could all be accomplished using "styles" in the manner of Autocad Architecture: You might have a style named "Plate-75mm-M12" The idea is you insert an object that has all it's settings governed by the style. So when you want one that uses say M10, you saveas the old style then modify the new style to provide M10 holes. (Oops-sounds like redefining blocks!)

All this is most un-Inventorish! After all, what do we spend half our drafting life doing? Changing what is already there. Unfortunately, I would need vast quantities of cash and a promise of a long contract to get into the Inventor club. I was told once that Autocad is OK, but to be really serious, you need Inventor....Hmmmm.

One last gasp here: what if you could somehow link your drawing objects to say a Microsoft Access database? How would it work in practice? Maybe you are in the drawing, and someone says make the holes M10, not M12 in that plate. You issue a special command, click on the plate and you are immediately in the database, right where the plate is. You then alter the hole sizes in there and go back to the drawing, and update the drawing: It is done.

How the heck this would work, I don't know, but it does seem a bit complicated to actually get it to work.

I have already experimented with a house drawing program that uses a text file to generate a drawing of a house, using 3D solids. The plan was to get my drawing outline from the architect, feed all the info into a text file and then press a button. Only trouble was that there would have be a huge amount of work drawing most common types of windows. The idea worked, but I gave up drawing house plans.

R2009 Autocad and P and IDs

Funny how things go....I was of the impression that R2009 was fairly crash prone. However, I have been using it now at NZSugar Ltd, where I am not attached to the network, and I have have had no crashes in the 3 weeks I have been there. (I was on a network on my previous assignment.)

Another factor may be that I have not done much in the way of 3D, stuck as I am doing the hot water P and ID. So Network? 3D?

In my way of doing P and IDs, I was asked if I could stick to NZSugar standard symbols for valves and so on. This I did do, and was able to add yet more symbols that they did not have.

The design and sizing of these symbols was a trick-do you make them fit on a grid? I have done P and IDs in the past and used the idea of using a grid but got sick of putting snaps on and off, not to mention that whenever you opened up someone elses drawing, they never used a grid.

The trouble is if you make your symbols too big, the drawings look wrong, and if they are too small, they are not legible.

I would be nice if, when I get the drawing with all the standard symbols on it, I could post it on this blog so others might use it. But I have not figured out how to put a download onto this blog.

Anyone have any ideas how?

Why I do not have an email address on my blog etc

Hi Jim!
Sorry I have not replied-I have been busy with personal things as well as falling off my bike.
I have not posted my email address as I do not wish to be engulfed with spam. Which makes me think: how can I be contacted? I have thought of this idea....since robots are trolling for things with an ampersand in them, all I have to do is put my address in a blog posting like this one and make it look like this: blecouteur at xtra dot co dot nz.
Should be easy to figure out....

Now for the autocad stuff: I have been laid off from my job at Nucon Ltd, and have managed to land a short contract at NZ Sugar Ltd, who as it happens, do not want my computer connected to their network. You could almost hear my computer go:"What....there is no network? So I will go at almost twice the speed....". Well, maybe not twice, but it is very noticeable.

Which raises the interesting question: Is this R2009's fault, or is it the networks?

Arriving at NZSugar, I was surprised to find there was already a draftsman there (they went for quite a period with none). What was interesting about him was the fact that he was into VBA for Autocad in a big way and he had applied this all to electrical drawings.

Another interesting thing was that NZSugar had bought 6 seats of Cadopedia, an autocad clone.
The version they had though, could not read more than one layout tab. The other draftsman downloaded the latest version, and apparently it can.....

R2009 Autocad

Oops! In a previous blog about R2009, I said the best thing about R2009 was that it drew blocks on the use of the soldraw command. This DID work in one of my drawings, but the other day I noticed it did not work in another. This is cause for some investigation on my part. I will keep you posted in case you do not have R2009.

It seems some people are having no problems at all with R2009, while others are complaining about some of the "features". For myself, I am perservering with it, as it may well be things like your video driver(is it up to date). I am using smpseesaw as a means of forcing acad onto one cpu (I have a dual cpu). I presume this makes a difference, but how much I am not sure.

It appears to be slightly weird that some have problems and some don't. I would like to know what the cause is. Any ideas, anyone?

How to get your co-workers frothing at the mouth....

I've been doing this a while now for architectural stuff. I want a detail in my drawing: I drag the detail block in from explorer, and insert it in paper space, then scale it by 1:10 or whatever scale it is. Nice, neat, quick and no horsing around with viewports and model space.

I have run this technique past a couple of Cad monkeys and ......they are unanimous in their condemnation of me......how dare I insert geometry that is not 1:1?

In my defence, I claim any fool opening such a drawing will immediately see that this is indeed a block and it is in paperspace....so what is the big deal?