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| Architosh News Reports | |
| Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com) |
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MacCAD-reView: VectorWorks ARCHITECT introduction
Architosh to review Diehl Graphsoft's new VectorWorks ARCHITECT: Series Begins Welcome to our first detailed MacCAD reView! This suggesting that we are looking again at a product that we showed very briefly a ways back when it first came out. In this first in a series of detailed reviews of Macintosh CAD and AEC software, Architosh will be getting under the hood of Diehl Graphsoft's first "vertical market" product add-on to its flagship MiniCAD VectorWorks. This product, called VectorWorks ARCHITECT, is especially designed for professional architects practicing in any number of building types -- from house renovations to high-rise commercial buildings. To really get a fair assessment we thought we would develop a process in which we can shorthand a design for a real building and implement many of the programs CAD features producing real documentation. To that end, we have decided to choose a simple courtyard type one story building which would be designed to accommodate a fictional new headquarters for BritasMedia (that's us!). To get a good sense of VectorWorks ARCHITECT's residential abilities as well as its commercial, we decided that this building would be located in a mixed residential, light commercial neighborhood and that we would need to respond contextually to residential issues in scale and materials. However, the courtyard side would be more commercial in nature, both in form and materials. With this 'contrived' scenario we could develop a building which made a strong contextual response to the fictional site by developing a hybrid design strategy -- allowing us to do what we want with commercial materials on the courtyard side. This will make more sense in the next article in this series but the issue here is this: "how can we kill two birds with one stone"; or, how can we test both the commercial and residential sides of this CAD program for architects? review Series in Parts: VectorWorks ARCHITECT
This series will take course over a number of weeks with at least one part of this detailed review per week. At the end of the process we'll have generated a number of partially completed CAD documents which will show you how this program really works. And we'll be able to really help you place this program within the contexts of other CAD programs you may already know, thereby informing your decision to consider VectorWorks ARCHITECT. VectorWorks ARCHITECT is the first "vertical" market add-on product to VectorWorks. You must own VectorWorks and be running version 8.5 in order to use it. ARCHITECT ships on its own CD-ROM and comes complete with a printed manual. We found the manual easy to understand, compact and well organized. In fact, the manual reflects the intentions behind ARCHITECT, which is to help the architectural CAD professional prepare for, organize and standardize the CAD development processes natural to any firm working with more than a few people. To that end, it starts with the phases of architectural design and documentation: starting with "programming", then "structuring the CAD documents", schematic design, design development and construction documents. The last section deals with managing and sharing information. VectorWorks ARCHITECT installs directly into the VectorWorks folder on your hard drive. Again, keeping with a long software tradition at Diehl Graphsoft, the program places minimal files in the System Folder (if only other developers could learn this). Once installed -- and there is no need to reboot -- you launch VectorWorks just like normal and then launch ARCHITECT by choosing the VectorWorks ARCHITECT "workspace" under the Workspace submenu under the File menu. That's the normal process, at which point the menu bar and palettes will change. We will explore the menu changes in the next issue (if you want to see what they look like see our previous article). VA Project Setup 'Assistant' The first thing you need to do in order to use ARCHITECT is to use the new VA Project Setup assistant. The goal with this technology is to more automatically allow the generation of scalable, sheet-based document setups that conform to standards in the AEC industry, while still allowing a great degree of flexibility and choice in how your office practices. The image below shows the dialog box where you begin this process. This step is actually a little tricky, because you are still able to choose the older, more generalized, AEC Setup Assistant.sta option, which is at the top of the popup menu bar -- a place where you would expect the default value to be VA Setup Assistant.sta.
Your options to create blank documents and use other templates is still available, as before in just VectorWorks, but using the VA Setup Assistant is the preferred method to setup documents in ARCHITECT.
From the File menu you choose VA Project Setup, then VA Setup Assistant, to enter into the setup wizard dialog boxes. The Assistant is where you need to setup your project documentation data. You need to be prepared with a number of items in advance of this process, such as heights about a set 0'-0" project elevation, as well as the precise values for depths of structure and so forth (preferably working to finish floors and ceilings). If some of these values change you may need to manually change them later in Layer dialog boxes while some changes -- such as the number of project sheets -- can be added back in the Assistant wizard (see VA Add Sheet.. in the menu in the graphic above). Next, we'll show you the VA Assistant process itself and how you setup the project information and what the results will look like. Click next page below.
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