Any experiences with Architectural Desktop?

[structuresguy]

Hi all, I have a question. My company is going away from Autocad to Architectural DEsktop 2004, basically immediately. We are an engineering firm with structural and MEP services. The MEP guys are switching to Autodesk Building Systems.

Does anyone have any experience with Arch Desktop for structural CAD? Or any other CAD work other than architectural? I am a little nervous that a program designed to make things look pretty for architects (no offense to all you archies out there) isn't going to be very useful to engineers.

Thanks

 

[ohenry111]

AutoCAD is still the root of Architectural Desktop. None of the AutoCAD commands are removed. Desktop is basically an overlay on top of AutoCAD. The key problem that you will have for the out of the box version is going to be finding things. The menus are redesigned and it is difficult to find your old commands in these. Use "menuload" to load the ACAD pulldown menus. The pretty pretty facet isn't really that valuable to us architects either, especially when trying to make construction documents.

 

[CDH]

We use ADT 2004 and I work in Structural. It comes with a lot of structural stuff, like all of the steel shapes and sizes, several K joists, (I have created some LH joists), and you can use "walls" for footings etc.

Having said this, the Structural stuff in it is put in for Arhitects to use. I'm not saying you can't use it for structural work, but you are going to have to do a bit more customizing, and be "creative" with the program to get it where you want it. I have beeen using ADT since 3.3 first came out, and I have managed to get it to work for me just fine. It is actually tp be able to work in 3D to layout framing and everything.

In the end, it is still just AutoCAD, except you can draw walls, windows, doors, etc. a heck of a lot easier than drawing 2 lines to make a wall.

If you go to any knid of training classes or anything, they probabably won't focust too much on the Structural part, other than show you how to do a few things with it. Like I said, there is a lot you can do with it, you just have to be creative.

 

[structuresguy]

Well, my firm has enough structural people to have two sessions for just structural, so I hope they tailor the lecture for structural use. I am a bit worried though as our company autocad guru is a mechy by trade, so the MEP guys get much more customization from him than us structural types.

 

[CDH]

If somebody else won't customize it for you, do it yourself! Besides, you know best how you want it to work, rather that the mech guy tyring to make it work for you.
When I went through training, it was all so new, that I couldn't comprehend what I wanted to do with it. Over time I discoverd things and came up with new ideas.
If you ever need any help, or just a push in the right direction, I'd be more than willing offer ideas and suggestions.

Chris

 

[structuresguy]

Thanks for the offer Chris. Unfortunately, my company is very rigid on the peons (anyone but the MIS people) making any changes to our hardware or software. They won't even let me buy my own cordless keyboard and mouse, even though they dont require any software drivers.

Oh well.