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Sunday, April 09, 2006

Personal Wishlist - Updated for RAC2008

There are many wishlists around but unfortunately none of them capture all that I'd like to see added/improved so I thought I'd post them. I believe it will also be a good reference for new users to see what isn't currently possible (without workarounds)... Note: some of these have been taken from the AUGI wishlist forums.

1. Elevation Tags
We need to be able to further customise these tags to achieve the standards we require. Whether this be by making them external families ala sections tags or simply allowing more options to customise their display.

2. Filtering of Sections by type (Now possible to an extent with the 2008 Hide in View tool)
How many of us spend countless hours using hide annotation in view to hide unwanted sections in a view. It would be great if we could filter the sections per view based on their type!

3. View Depth Clipping of Lineweights in section and elevation!
Sections/Elevations often look flat and are difficult to read, this needs to be implemented. Workarounds such as turning on shadows greatly increase printing time to an unacceptable amount.

4. Adding a new family category for SIGNAGE that has a setting that enables you to stop the signage from flipping when mirrored.
This would be great for mirroring projects.

5. Improved Site Modelling tools (Slightly improved in 2008 with the floor point edit tool)
Currently modelling things like kerbs that follow topography or having components located underground that display correctly in section (with earth hatch wrapping around them) are somewhat difficult to achieve.

DELETED 6. Improved handling of Groups (No longer an issue in 2008)
Groups can be somewhat unreliable with changes to a group often resulting in being unable to "finish group" and then having to ungroup and regroup certain items. Things like this need to be addressed.

7. Addition of further modelling tools (improved in 2008 with point edits...)
The ability to import SAT is great but it would be better not having to purchase another program in order to create complex NURB forms easily.

DELETED 8. The ability to have semi-transparent filled regions (available in 2008)
Sometimes there is the need to lightly hatch over an area without either fully blocking it out or making it too visible.

9. Ability to add views when working in an in-place family
All too often do we need to quit the family and setup some views in order to achieve what we're after...

9. A quick paintbrush tool for resequencing numbering of doors/windows/carparking etc when a change is made.
It's quite time consuming when a change occurs at door 2 and there are three hundred odd doors to renumber. Also when placing anything that is tagged they should have automatic sequential numbering based on your first selection/tagging method (numbers/letters etc).

10. The ability to have lettered revisions as well as numbered
I'm sure most architectural office use both letters and numbers for different stages of the design process. This needs to be implemented in order to make the revision schedule a valid tool, as well as the next item.

11. Greater ability to customise the way schedules appear.
We need the ability to rotate schedules so the column headers can be on the side or the bottom of the schedule. Also the ability to flip the direction in which new rows are added. For instance, the field at the bottom is filled first and subsequent fields added above as required.

12. Greater control of wall layer visibility.
Sometimes we need to only show structural layers of a wall in a view as the finish layers overcomplicate the drawing. Workarounds are not sufficient for this.

13. NON-RECTANGULAR crop regions!
This is very common practice. Having to filled region or masking region (2008) out the unwanted information is annoying and time wasting.

14. Views between sheets need to be able to be aligned
Maybe an underlay sheet tool would be good for this so we can ensure the views appear in the exact same location.

15. Allow true colour representation of views (improved in 2008 with transparent filled regions)
Often light pastel colours will show as white meaning we must use bright ugly colours in order to get differentiation between areas...

16. Rescaling of hatch patterns without having to find the pat file
Its annoying having to find the pat file again and re-import it just to rescale a hatch pattern.

17. A select all instances per view tool
Select all instances is great but there are times when you only want to select from what is shown.

18. Improved DWG Export
Dimensions and text when exported need to create new text and dimension styles instead of using "standard" as this will vary between computers. Also the location of text in dimensions and the witness lines should link to the AutoCAD dimension style settings instead of using proxy overrides.

19. Additional Text control tools (MODEL & DRAFTING)
If we are to improve upon the days of ole (AutoCAD) we need all the text control options that were available there. For instance, the ability to create oblique text, adjust character spacing and adjust text width factor in model text as well.

20. The ability to have decals appear in a shaded view
Those of us who need to show signage, it would be great is we could place these in a way that they display in a standard shaded view without the need to render the view or insert a jpg and line it up...

21. The ability to attach walls to stairs and have stairs join to floors
Stairs are still fiddly and don't have all the flexibilies required. Multi-level stairs need to be able to attach to floors (monolithic). Walls should be able to attach to the underside. Spiral stairs should be able to go further than 360°. Spiral treads need to overlap.

22. Better control of hosted Railings
Railings on stairs when their heights are incorrect, we need the ability to manual edit the 3D path to ensure the railing follows the appropriate angles etc. Although this is sort of possible some slopes are still difficult to achieve. It would also be great if we could tab select the balusters and adjust them individually as an override as spacings are rarely the same...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great list!

I should add 3d "revision clouds", or semi-transparent boxes to remind us to check for interferences or solve details in 3d views.
As a newbie, I don't know if somebody has suggested it before....
If so, my apologies.

Chris said...

Interesting Idea,

I guess your workflow is already achieveable simply by creating new 3D views with appropriate section boxes around the areas in question...

Can't imagine it being much different than this?