Phil Bunker | AUG 2024
Have you ever tried to explain to someone the concepts behind 3D design and animation? Well I have and nine times out of ten it’s met either with confusion or that look you get of utter bemusement. Then you spend the next couple of hours trying to justify your passion and interest secretly knowing the person you are talking to is counting sheep in their head.
“3D models represent a 3D object using a collection of points in 3D space, connected by various geometric entities such as triangles, lines, curved surfaces, etc.” This is a definition taken from Wikipedia and to be honest with descriptions like this chaptering a search on Google, I’m not surprised there is an element of confusion in the industry.
When starting any discussion topic it’s often useful to begin with a definition or quote to clearly label exactly what we’re looking at. No doubt there are many of you who are already familiar with the term CAD and it’s uses, however in this article we’re going to discuss some great tips and tricks for getting started with a CAD drawing and some expert advice on working in a CAD environment. With all this in mind I have put together an 8 point list, which I hope will help first time users to get started, and for you professional designers out there, it may serve as a little reminder of some great time saving ideas.
Sketching is a great way to start ↘
Deciding on your page size, scales and units ↘
Simplify your designs with Layers ↘
Speed up your projects with templates ↘
Where to start drawing? ↘
Familiar tools & options ↘
Working with symbol libraries ↘
Exporting & sharing your work ↘
As a designer myself I have often been plagued with where to begin with a project. Over the years I have learnt the best place to start is to first understand what you are trying to draw. Now, this doesn’t mean lay on a couch and start to look inside yourself, all I’m saying is just think about what your project goals are. Let’s take a floor plan as an example…. I learnt years ago that grabbing a piece of scrap paper and sketching a basic idea down with some dimensions, saved me hours of messing around later on. The sketch does not have to be worthy of the Tate Modern, it just needs to give you a reference when starting your CAD drawing adventure.
Let’s be honest, not many of us have access to a huge printer, which is why scales and paper sizes are important to determine early on. All you need to do is to first decide what paper size you want to print your CAD drawing onto. Then once you’ve made your mind up, think about scales. Now I know there may be a few of you wondering what is a scale, and I’m not talking about one of those balancing things in the kitchen you use when baking a cake. In a CAD drawing a scale gives you the ability to draw an object on the page that shows the correct dimension even though it’s actual size may be different.
The best way to describe layers are to think of them as multiple sheets of paper. You can draw key parts of your design on separate layers to help keep your drawings simple. Once again let’s take a floor plan as an example...
All you need to think about when deciding what to put on layers is to decide if it would be easier to draw the objects on their own, without other parts of the drawing being effected. Some other great points with layers are that they can be hidden and shown at any time, meaning you could use them to hide notes and comments that you don’t need others to see.
Here is a really important part of speeding up your designs. Templates are basically documents that you set up to contain parts of a drawing that you use over and over again. Some CAD software, such as MacDraft allow you to create these documents and save them as a personal template, which is accessible whenever you start a new drawing. This means you can set up a drawing with scales, units and key objects that are consistent across your designs, then save that drawing as a template for future use. This will save you an immeasurable amount of time, allowing you to get on with the more important parts of your CAD design.
This is a question that I get asked on a daily basis. The answer is not always the same as it does depend on what design you’re working on. That being said I do have some advice on the best places to start.
There are many CAD applications out there, some more complicated than others, but the one that’s right for you is the one that offers familiar features that will make working on your drawings easier. MacDraft is a great CAD product that boasts a comprehensive set of vector drawing tools that will have you creating CAD drawings in minutes. You’ll notice in any CAD product that you’ll soon learn which tools you use more frequently than others. This is where the familiarity comes in. If the tools you frequently use are similar in the way they work to what you are used to then you won’t have to spend time learning the ropes. As an example, MacDraft has a great way of giving you all the help you need when using it’s tools, more over you’ll find drawing shapes, lines and walls simply with a click of the mouse.
This is where the power of a CAD application like MacDraft really comes into it’s own. Often when working with CAD drawings you’ll find there are parts of your drawings, like windows and doors, furniture, lighting and power symbols etc that you often use over and over again.
Once you have finally completed your CAD drawing the next important advice is to think about who is going to be looking at it. There are many options for you to prepare your CAD drawing for sharing with others, but it’s important to remember what they may be using to look at the files. The best tip I can give is to always provide a PDF of your drawing, that way anyone can open it on PC or on Mac. You can use other file formats such as PNG or JPEG, but PDF is the best option as it maintains the quality of your design no matter what size you view it at or print it.