AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 - (Page 10)

AUTODESK IMPRESSION From Drawing to Display: The Value of Autodesk Impression Now that you have had a chance to open up and play with your new Autodesk® 2009 products, it’s time to really have some fun. Autodesk® Impression came out last year and is now in its second version. Way to go, Impression! The biggest news about this release is that anyone on Autodesk’s Subscription Program is now eligible to download Impression 2 for free! Impression is no longer available as a standalone package. The only way to get it is through the subscription program. If you weren’t aware of that, it’s okay. Put down your copy of AUGIWorld, log on to your subscription site and download Impression. Install it, start it, and pick up this magazine again. We can get you started. hibit. Architects, planners, and landscape designers are among the obvious users of Impression, but the list is not limited to these design professionals. Mechanical designers, cabinet designers, and facility managers can also use Impression. Any member of the Subscription Program should give Impression a try. It is actually very simple to run. This seems familiar Why try to impress? Why should anyone use Impression? Well, now that it is free, what other reason is there to try it out? At first glance many users may be under the “impression” that they don’t need it. Let’s see if anyone needs this freebie or not. If you or your firm creates 2D design illustrations, then Impression can be used. What are 2D illustrations? A design illustration is a fancy way of saying construction drawing or ex- One of the greatest features of Impression is that it runs much like any Autodesk product. This Figure 2 – A close up with a marker style means that it has a familiar feel to it. It even has blocks, ing was created with closed polylines, then layers, and osnaps. Here is one way to get simply select a rendering style and put it on started, assuming you haven’t used Impres- the appropriate layer. Using this method sion before. Take a DWG or a DWF. Revit means that your drawing can be finished and Inventor each has a more difficult time very quickly. Note that the linework has to going straight to Impression compared to be closed polylines to fully work. Therein vanilla AutoCAD, so I recommend using lies the decision. Where do I spend my a DWF of your drawing. Open Impression time, in the CAD file or in Impression? and import the geometry. This is another That is up to you. beautiful aspect of Impression—Autodesk The second choice is to use the fill comproducts can be imported right in and it mand. This method will take longer to renknows what the objects are. If the draw- der because each area to fill will have to be selected, but in the long run, it could be quicker. If no prep time is taken in the CAD file, and the fill command is used in Impression, then yes, overall it will take less time. You will have to decide which method is best for you and your firm. I recommend trying both methods to help you decide. Time to change? One other factor to consider while choosing rendering methods is revision work. Will this drawing change? Of course it will! Take into consideration that creating closed polylines in AutoCAD will mean that there will be very few issues to cope with when updating the geometry in Impression. Impression 2 handles fill pattern updates much better than Re10 w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.augi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008 Table of Contents The CAD Manager From Drawing to Display: The Value of Autodesk Impression Designing for Auto-Dimensioning The Proof Is in the Footing Managing Customization and Profiles Getting to Know the Display Manager What's Cooking at Autodesk Labs? On the Back Page

AUGIWorld Magazine - May/June 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.