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Autodesk's updated architectural tools make a strong team.
AFTER READING HIS obituary in a newspaper, Mark Twain said, "The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated." So is the hubbub I've heard about the impending demise of Autodesk Architectural Desktop. Since Autodesk acquired Revit two years ago, many pundits have warned that Architectural Desktop is on its last legs-that it's old technology. I'm here to say that's just not so. I continue to be impressed with the program's strengths and viability (figure 1). For the foreseeable future, Autodesk plans to continue to upgrade and develop this program. Given its large audience (more than 300,000 seats in use), its capabilities, and all the third-party add-ons, you should have confidence standardizing on this platform.
With the advent of drawing management in Architectural Desktop 2004, the program's automated xref system became an equal match to Revit's and ArchiCAD's automated integration schema (figure 2). Architectural Desktop 2005 is a superb, subtle, and productive AEC design and construction documentation solution. Though no program is perfect, this one is an extremely capable 3D CAD program with a widely known and understood interface.
Updated yearly, Architectural Desktop 2005 continues to offer new features. Like its predecessors, Architectural Desktop 2005 is based on AutoCAD and so provides the new features and improvements implemented into AutoCAD 2005.
Top Additions
Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2005 is an evolutionary, not a radical, update. Some of the new features are major additions. The new Detail Components, in conjunction with AEC Modify, increases productivity for 2D architectural detailing. Callouts, which automatically coordinate detail numbering between drawings, are one of my favorites. They improve the accuracy of the construction document set.
Here's my list of the best new features:
Details and detail components offer new routines to create construction details (figure 3). For more on this new module, see Michael Dakan's report in Cadalyst's AEC Tech News #119 (www.cadalyst.com/details1.htm) and #120 (www.cadalyst.com/details2.htm).
Annotation lets you note detail components, object styles and definitions, object components through materials, and 2D sections and elevations across xrefs.
Callouts automatically generate sections, elevations, and detail backgrounds. Callouts automatically code and link sections, elevations, and the like to pages and page numbers.
Drawing management and sheet set coordination integrates many new functions in AutoCAD 2005,...