First, if your company is considering doing anything in 3D, stop and think - what is your definition of 3D, what is the designer's definition, and what is your staff capable of? Unfortunately, all too often, these three things are not the same. When asked to think of 3D design, most people think of the pretty pictures we see in magazines tempting us to buy some new product that will supposedly save ourselves from countless hours of work. When you think of 3D design you should instead break it down into its various components.
The first part of 3D design and drafting is simply spatial studies. This means using a program like 3D Studio Viz or even Max and doing form studies. Unfortunately , only some of the younger designers out there know this software. Having had Autodesk certified training in MAX, I can tell you these programs can do almost anything, except getting a project manager or designer to use them. That right there is their biggest problem - not many people know them or feel comfortable using them. I use them myself and I have found that it is a cool product once you get the hang of it for designing with basic shapes.
From here, we leave the world of design and head off into the real world of getting something for a presentation. Both Viz and Max can be used for this but, even as Autodesk states, they are simply visualization tools, and not for real drafting. This takes us back to AutoCAD. You can easily translate files to and from VIZ, Max and AutoCAD, but to go from either VIZ or MAX into AutoCAD you may find the files too big. Viz and MAX translate out their objects as polylines, and if you have used anything other than simple shapes, or have applied modifiers to the object, your file sizes can be huge. Not only that, but working and modifying these drawing are difficult. Instead, it can be wise at this time to change to AutoCAD and leave the Viz files behind, using them for what they were, simple 3D visualization diagrams. Once in ACAD, you might like to use a program like Facade to help draw the object in 3D. However, it too uses a polyline as the basis for drawing 3D objects. Personally , I wish one of these programs would make use of regions and solids, but nothing yet has done so that I know of. Facade is a great tool for doing 3D-design work, or for creating the shell of the building for 3D rendering and walk throughs. It places items on different layers for rendering later, and it has really good dialogue boxes that show you what the window, door or roof will look like, unlike other packages. The problem here is that this is only a 3D model. It is useful for creating a rendering to help you with the planning department and neighborhood committees, or for helping your client see what the building will look like, but it will not help to produce a construction document. This is simply for presentation. However, once this is drawn, you can walk through the model, and get a perspective from any view you want. I have actually used this product from Robert McNeel with another product of theirs called Walkabout which is now included in their other program, called Accurender, to redesign a home for a client as she sat there with me calling the shots. It's not often that a client can state design changes and see them in (pretty much) real time. I should add here that everyone should go to their page for a free working Beta copy of the software, along with other really great betas and demos and free stuff and job lists, etc. I have yet to find anything that they do that I don't like and isn't the best of on the market. Once the drawing is in the computer, if you will do any sort of rendering, besides a simple hide, you should consider buying a CD of 3D models. Again, McNeel has a CD for about $300 that is pretty extensive for most applications. You will want to fill your model with lots of everyday objects to bring life into it. Another thing you may wish for is people in the model. Some people add these after the rendering, but that means a lot of work in PhotoShop from Adobe. This works, and I have done this in the past, especially if you are adding this building to an infill site where you have other buildings around it and you need to do a photo montage. If this isn't for you, the CD from McNeel has people in various predefined poses, but changing them is more than difficult. If you need a person in a special pose, you might try the program call Poser, which is done by the same people who do Painter and KPT. Last I checked they were calling themselves Meta Creations, and they are buying up lots of smaller companies as quickly as they can, and bringing to market some really cool stuff. The files that poser creates can be imported into ACAD as a DXF and it allows all sorts of bodies, from kids to adults to superheroes (just for fun).
