Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2006

In March, I reviewed the new release of AutoCAD, which featured several significant improvements and marked the 20th release of the oldest and most ubiquitous CAD application in the AEC industry. This review takes a look at the corresponding new release of Autodesk's architecture-specific design and documentation solution built on the AutoCAD platform, Autodesk Architectural Desktop (ADT) 2006. This comes exactly a year after I reviewed the previous release, ADT 2005, in which I pointed out that those concerned about the near-term future of ADT, in light of Autodesk's competing Revit application, should find the continuing development and support of ADT reassuring. Autodesk continues to reaffirm its commitment to ADT at its annual user conference (see my overview of Autodesk University 2004) and follows up every new release of AutoCAD with a corresponding new release of ADT. Let's see what improvements Autodesk has engineered in ADT 2006.

Overview of Improvements

To start with, the new release of ADT incorporates all the new features of AutoCAD 2006, which were substantial enough to qualify it as a major upgrade of the application. Dynamic input, a new way to interact with the application that makes the command line optional rather than mandatory,is available in ADT as well, displaying command prompts and all coordinate and dimension values near the cursor where they can be edited instead of entering them in the command line (see Figure 1). As I pointed out in my review of AutoCAD 2006, dynamic input is a long overdue step in the overall modernization of AutoCAD's interface and will be welcomed by ADT users as well. Another critical AutoCAD-based improvement is in annotation, with in-place editing of text and the ability to create lettered, numbered, and bulleted lists that automatically update when changes are made. The improvements in zooming and selection are reflected in ADT's interface as well, along with dynamic blocks, improvements in data extraction, and the overhaul of hatching.

In addition, ADT has several improvements and new features of its own. A new Project Standards feature lets you establish, maintain and synchronize standards across all drawings in an ADT project. Additionally, you can assign a specific streamlined set of tool palettes and Content Browser library to a project so as to provide consistency across all the drawings in it. Editing of objects has been simplified with the ability to directly convert one object type into other, and overall editing has been made easier with an Edit-in-View feature, that allows a selected portion of a design to be isolated and edited in a plan, section, or elevation view. It is now possible to create color-filled thematic displays with the accompanying legends by creating display themes that incorporate non-graphic data. New tools have been introduced for streamlining the use of break marks, allowing the creation of custom schedule tags, and improving the link between ADT and Autodesk VIZ Render for material definition and visualization. ADT 2006 has further enhanced the formula capabilities first introduced with ADT 2005 and they are much more powerful than formulas in AutoCAD tables, even supporting "if then" statements and more.

Recall that one of the most important new features in ADT 2005 was the Details module, which accelerated the speed with which construction details could be assembled. ADT 2006 continues to further enhance this module by expanding the library of detail components that ships with the application, providing a new Component wizard for creating custom detail content, and a new Keynote Editor for modifying the default keynote databases and creating new ones to accommodate locally developed keynoting systems when needed. The detailed project design data created in ADT can now be better harvested by providing a link to an ODBC database, from where it can be queried for creating specific reports. This external data can also be linked back to ADT for use in specifications and project updates.

Specific enhancements have been provided in the creation and modification of specific building elements such as curtain walls, structural members, and spaces. There is a new Create from Surface tool for curtain walls, and in-place editing allows the individual cells, bays, columns, or nested grids of a curtain wall to be manipulated directly and interactively in the drawing area (see Figure 2). Structural member enhancements include automatic trimming of columns, beams, and braces; creating arrays of multiple beams in a single operation; interactive editing that allows connections between structural members to be maintained or broken; and the generation of column and beam layouts to visually check for interferences. The ability to automatically detect spaces in a design and provide the corresponding area information has been updated to provide usable area and gross area in addition to net area.

Rounding up the enhancement list is a Walkthrough Assistant that makes it easier to produce animations of ADT content in VIZ; improved AutoCAD export allowing pure AutoCAD DWG files in various versions to be generated, with all AEC objects exploded, for external consultants; and the ability to publish a 3D DWF file, complete with material information, for sharing and distribution to the extended design team, who can review it in the free Autodesk DWF Viewer application.

Let us look at some of these improvements in more detail.

Closer Look at Some Key Features

One of the most critical tasks in building design and documentation is to define and maintain a set of standards for use in a specific project as well as across all the projects in a firm. To this end, ADT 2006 has introduced a Project Standards feature for establishing, maintaining and synchronizing standards across all the drawings in a project. You start by creating standard styles, display settings, and AutoCAD components in one or more standards drawings, which can be in DWG (drawing file), DWT (drawing template), or DWS (standards file) format. Standard style types and display settings include styles for the individual objects such as walls, doors, windows, etc., schedule table styles, layer key styles, material definitions, and so on (see the list in Figure 3). AutoCAD standards include layers, dimension styles, text styles, and linetypes. Project-specific standards drawings can be placed within the project folder, while department-specific or company-wide standards can be placed in a common location outside the individual project folders.

Once the standards are defined, they can be assigned to a project using the Configure dialog shown in Figure 3. As you can see, multiple standards drawings can be loaded in this interface, and you can specify which standards drawing contains the standards for each object. Once the assignment is complete, you can then set up the synchronization behavior of the project, choosing between automatic, semi-automatic, and manual modes depending upon the project workflow and how you want the synchronization to happen. For instance, automatic synchronization will detect any discrepancies and synchronize a project drawing with the specified standards when the drawing is opened, without displaying any prompts or warnings when project styles are overridden and non-standard objects are encountered. In contrast, manual synchronization has to be initiated by the user and will proceed with prompts and warnings about non-standard styles and objects.

You can take the standardization even further by creating a project-specific set of tool palettes and Content Browser library, and assigning them to the project. This will enable consistency across project drawings, and streamline the list of available tools by removing unnecessary content from the palettes and the Content Browser. Figure 4 shows an example of a tool palette catalog in the Content Browser created specifically for the sample project, and its corresponding display in the Tool Palettes window.

The Isolate Objects functionality in ADT, which is used for temporarily hiding and displaying selected objects in the drawing to better focus on them, has been expanded in the new release with additional options to isolate and edit the selection in plan, section, or elevation views. Figure 5-a shows the Edit in Elevation option being selected for a portion of the drawing from the context menu. After specifying the section line, extent, and direction, the selected objects appear in a section view in a new window, as shown in Figure 5-b. After making the necessary modifications, you can click the Exit Edit in View icon—shown in the top left corner of the window—to return to the previous view.

The new Display Themes feature is useful for highlighting data in a drawing that is typically not visible. It involves defining theme settings that are used for display when the selected object types meet certain criteria, defined by theme rules. Figure 6-a shows a display theme style defined for the type of space in a commercial building. This theme can be activated in a drawing by inserting the display theme legend, using the corresponding Theme tool from the Document tool palette, as shown in Figure 6-b. Once the theme is activated for an object property in a drawing, it overrides the default display of the object. Thus, the space plan shown in Figure 6-b is colored according to the type of the individual spaces, as defined in the display theme style shown in Figure 6-a. Other predefined display themes that ship with the application are for coloring spaces according to size and coloring walls according to their fire rating; these can be readily inserted in drawings for quickly generating color-coded space layouts and fire rating plans. Custom display themes can also be defined and used for any object property.

And finally, let us take a closer look at the new Material tool that improves the link between ADT and Autodesk VIZ Render for material definition and visualization. Recall that VIZ Render is the dedicated rendering and presentation extension to ADT, based on the 3ds MAX engine, which allows high-end photorealistic renderings and animations to be created from an ADT model. A file linking capability allows you to continue modeling in ADT with the changes getting automatically updated in the visualizations in VIZ Render. The workflow between these two applications has been enhanced in the latest release with the ability to share the rendering materials created in VIZ Render with ADT. This allows them to be applied to ADT objects so that other members of the design team are aware of the choice of material and can share the same material when required. Figure 7-a shows how a rendering material from the VIZ Render tool palette can be dragged and dropped into an ADT palette. This tool can then be dropped into the drawing to create a new AEC material. You can now use this exported material to create a new ADT material definition, which you can then apply to objects, as shown in Figure 7-b. The file linking capability mentioned earlier will combine the rendering materials from ADT with the materials assigned in VIZ Render, and use this combination of materials in the revised rendered image.

Analysis and Conclusions

As I pointed out last year in my review of ADT 2005, the biggest strength of ADT continues to be its AutoCAD base, offering AutoCAD users a familiar workflow and interface for transitioning from traditional 2D drafting to an object-based CAD approach. From that perspective, ADT benefits greatly from the overall modernization of AutoCAD. The substantial improvements in AutoCAD 2006, including dynamic input, overhaul of annotation, improvements in selection and zooming, and dynamic blocks, all of which are reflected in ADT as well, are compelling enough to warrant the upgrade. In addition, new features such as project standards, isolating objects for editing in required views, display themes, tighter integration between ADT and VIZ Render, and the other enhancements described in this review all add up to make ADT 2006 a solid release. The project standards feature, in particular, is critical as most firms continue to struggle with maintaining consistency in design and documentation across all their projects, as they move away from a drafting-centric to modeling-centric mode of working.

ADT continues to have high system requirements in comparison to AutoCAD. It requires a minimum of 1 GB of RAM and Pentium 4 1.4 GHz processor, while the recommended specifications are even higher: 2 GB RAM and Pentium 4 3.4 GHz processor. (AutoCAD 2006 recommends 512 MB of RAM and a Pentium III or later, 800 MHz processor.) The additional memory and processor speed are mostly due to the integration with VIZ Render as well as the additional 3D capability, surface hatching, and material bitmaps. While most offices that upgrade their hardware regularly will be able to use ADT effectively, it may get increasingly difficult for users to be able to take their ADT visualization work home, unless they have high-end computers for their personal use. However, if ADT is to be used without its VIZ Render visualization capability, its system requirements are not that high and it should work on existing hardware.

The poor 3D capabilities of AutoCAD, which have continued to remain one of its main limitations, are not such a major issue with ADT, since it is based on the use of 3D object-based CAD tools. However, the lack of improvements in 3D in its AutoCAD base do make it difficult to model an unusual or irregular form in ADT for which no ready tool exists. On the plus side, however, the integration with VIZ Render that is based on the superior rendering technology of 3ds MAX makes it possible to generate extremely high-quality visuals and animations from an ADT model in comparison to other building modeling applications.

Taking stock of the application as a whole vis-à-vis the current technological trends in the AEC industry, ADT continues to be a complex application that takes serious effort to learn and master. For those trying to use ADT for implementing the BIM (building information modeling) approach on a design project, it is a daunting task since all the building information is distributed across multiple files divided into several categories such as levels, divisions, constructs, elements, view drawings, sheets, and sheet sets. And this is something that is hard to circumvent, even with the abundant resources that Autodesk can put into ADT's continued development, since it is intrinsic to the nature of the application. With ADT, you never get out of the feeling that you are drawing, rather than modeling the building. Autodesk also seems to be acknowledging this in their marketing of ADT as "Making AutoCAD better for architects" rather than focusing on its BIM capabilities.

Also, considering that full-fledged BIM adoption is still some years away (see the Executive Forum discussion in AECbytes Newsletter #18), ADT remains a good way for AutoCAD's vast user base to begin to explore object-based CAD without a major disruption in workflow. Several features, very compatible with AutoCAD processes, can be implemented immediately and can alone be worth the price of the crossgrade from AutoCAD. These include the 2D detailing features, which don't use the ADT object model at all but dramatically accelerate the drafting of architectural details. Keynoting is a similar easy implementation. And simply using the walls, doors, and windows features of ADT to produce plans efficiently is another quick productivity booster.

If firms who decide to adopt ADT can resist the temptation of falling back to using ADT like AutoCAD, they can benefit from the revitalization of the AutoCAD platform and still chalk up some critical experience which will prove invaluable in full-scale BIM implementation further down the road.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.