3. Redraw the building from scratch in 2D. You may be able to trace the 3D objects if they were correctly drawn.
As we said earlier, using the 3D is important for not only design, but for presentation. Once you have created a 3D model there are several steps to creating a presentable picture that looks real.
First think about what you want to see. Is there a specific area that is important or is a flythrough necessary? Sometimes rather than doing a flyby shots of various important points along the path create a much more impressive presentation than simply walking through an area. Part of the reason for this is the time that it takes to create a decent flythrough vs. several shoots that you spend much more time on creating just right.
How will you present this? Will it be single images on paper, on the computer screen, or on a TV? This will determine in part what resolution you will need to render it at and how much detail will be in the picture. A print that is on an 8.5x11 needs much less detail and resolution than a 24x36 plot. Check your printer for color matching and resolutions that are possible. Many times what you see on the screen will not be the same as what you print out due to the limitations of the ink and paper. The color gamut is the actual colors that are producible with the inks that you are using, and your monitor has a much greater gamut than your printer. If you will be porting this to a VCR check how a sample image will be produced. Keep away from large areas of red on TV's as this causes problems with most sets. If you will be sending this out to be printed on a slide for a projector presentation, send them a sample file to see how it will look. Many service bureaus can do lots of different outputs, but you should check for how long the turn around is and if they will have any backlogs or large orders expected when you will want your output.
If you will be presenting this on the computer consider whether it will be an interactive presentation or a slide show. If you want a slide show, consider using MS PowerPoint. I recently did an 8-minute presentation that engrossed over 100megs of AVI's, BMP's, DWG's and other images and text, and was very pleased with the ease of use and the speed at which we were able to create a presentation. The entire project to create the AVI's, generate many of the BMP's, scan in pictures, create the text, etc was all done within a 48-hour timeframe. The fact that we were able to copyclip into PowerPoint directly AutoCAD images was a real bonus, and since most people have this already on their computer was an added benefit. Other software you may want to use would be Premiere by Adobe, or Director, Authorware or Action by MacroMedia. Both PowerPoint and Director can also port directly over to HTML I believe so if you do it right you may even create a presentation that can be ported to your web site as you do it.
