Coming from Sketchup, anyone?

Arno

Hi,

Was wondering if there are more people here who try take make the switch (or already succesfully did so) from Sketchup to cad.

Simple things in Sketchup, like measuring in 3d and drawing simple guidelines give me quite a headache in Bricscad.

Michael Mayer

Not Sketchup but from Vectorworks or other 3D/CAD outside of the Autodesk universe.
Yes, there are quite a few simple and comfortable things that are far worse in Bricscad.
(no real chain dimension, just separate single dimensions ?, Editing and accessibility of
nested Blocks, Tools that end after single usage, you can't activate a Layer that was
switched off, no Classes+Layers, no View Clip Cube (beside for point clouds now),
no Story System, the whole Autocad-ness in itself and 100s more)

And there are many things in Bricscad that work far better than in Vectorworks.
(Whole Direct Modeling, variable Ply width in Compositions, IFC Import, BIMIFY, PROPAGATE,
everything based on true Solid geometry, Structure Panel, Object Visibility, and 100s more)

The grass is always greener on the other side.
I had the same experience when switching from Microstation to Vectorworks. You will always
get annoyed and wonder how one can make certain simple easy things so wrong and
complicated, instead of just enjoying the things that work better.

Until you get so used to the new workflows that you forget to get annoyed again by questionable
workflows, but just do it by muscle memory without much thinking of about.
Wait, .... that does not work for me.
I get still always annoyed again.
Might be the reason why I bought Bricscad beside my Vectorworks.

So it is very important to raise your voice and send Feature or Change Requests to Bricscad Support,
which is the only official and realistic way to get heard and remarked in a good Software Development
bureaucracy.
And Bricscad Support is one of the best that I have ever experienced.
There is just one huge hurdle for change requests in Bricscad being denied, Priorities and the holy 100%
Autocad Compatibility. Not only for Data and Information, but also for workflows, usage, UI and UX,
something I also only realized - after - I bough Bricscad.
But they are very open for anything that does not endanger holy Autodesk Compatibility.

avc

Holywar topic

Any change of working tool causes irritation and even pain. It's unavoidable. Even the transition from AutoCAD to Brics.

--- measuring in 3d
There is a whole bunch of tools and measuring methods: _dist, _area, _dim, "nested distance" .... What exactly are you missing?
--- drawing simple guidelines
You may be trying to hammer in nails with a microscope. Are you sure you need CAD-drawings? not a pictures?

--- No real chain dimension, just separate single dimensions
Not true. Is there a _dimbaseline and a _dimcontinue
--- Editing and accessibility of nested Blocks
_bedit asks which block to edit and any nesting depth in the list. but maybe you wrote about something else ...
--- Tools that end after single usage
To repeat the last command, just press the spacebar. What could be easier? If every command requires you to press Esc to stop cycling, it will only get worse. In some of my commands, I make a "cycling" option for those who want to.
--- View Clip Cube
I don't know what "Clip" is, but I really miss the navigation cube from AutoCAD. The "chair" is much worse.

There is a real drawback of Brics - the inability to select the solid faces with a frame in order to transfer many faces at once and stretch the entire assembly at once. Or just to remove the bunch of holes. Clicking all faces one at a time is extremely tedious. I do not understand what prevented the implementation of the work of the frame with the pressed Ctrl.

And yes, I agree about technical support. It's just magic. 80% of the bugs I found in the dotNet API were fixed in first main version within a year.

Michael Mayer

No offence but,
in some aspects I'm unrelenting.

--- No real chain dimension, just separate single dimensions
Not true. Is there a _dimbaseline and a _dimcontinue

I will look into these.

--- Editing and accessibility of nested Blocks
_BEDIT asks which block to edit and any nesting depth in the list. but maybe you > > wrote about something else ...

In VW I double click on a Symbol (BC=Block),
like in Bricscad and get the edit Dialogue (Edit 2D/3D/Definitions.
But here it ends.
If I want to edit a nested Symbol in VW, I just double click one of the
included nested Blocks and do the same. Until I reached the End of nesting.
Afterwards I just leave each Block Level, one after each other.
If I realize my editing was a mistake, it is just a Task for UnDo.

Now try the same in Bricscad.
(Maybe we can agree that you may have a clients file and no clue about Blocks
naming, just what you see)

• Edit Block
  Now you see the content of the open Block and see that what you want to edit
  is another (nested) Block.

• you select the parent Block

• Edit Block
• have to save/reject previous parent Block

• in the best case you have a new Block list with the desired nested Block
  selected and can click OK.
  (I had an SR about that and something was fixed but I could show you
  examples where that does simply not work)

• if that does not work, you have to :
  a) know/remember the name of the nested Block
  (and maybe more nested child Blocks already that you want to edit)
  b) scrolls through an endless text list to finally find your "nested" Block

So what is so easy or advanced UI/UX in Auto/Bricscad's Block Editing ?
BTW,
Why can't I even examine all Blocks from Bricscad's Drawing Explorer
and just select a Block in the list and right click and choose BEDIT ?
(Or even delete a Block and get a hint that it is used in File and that I
want to replace the Instances in File by another Block,
which I can do in VW all the time)

--- Tools that end after single usage
To repeat the last command, just press the spacebar. What could be easier? If
every command requires you to press Esc to stop cycling, it will only get worse. In > some of my commands, I make a "cycling" option for those who want to.

Just that a Command - wait, better - a Tool, repeats doing its thing, as long until
you choose/activate another tool, as 98% of all 2D/3D Software under
Windows, Mac and Linux works since decades ?
(Like drawing Rectangles and moving the around for a whole day for
preliminary designs)

--- View Clip Cube

is just a temporary Section Volume, that is optimized for View Control.
Basically you could do exactly the same in Bricscad with a Section
in Volume Mode. Just n times more tedious and with more less reliable
clicking.
In VW it is not in the way, but you can easily select it by one of its Edges,
hover over any Face (even occluded ones) intuitively and move them to
redefine your clip.
Switch it on/off by one Icon Click. When something is selected
and you activate it, it will fit around that selection + a reasonable
margin, hold SHIFT when activating to force previous Volume.
I think Microstation had a similar Clip Volume Feature since early 2000s.

andrewhockley

I gave up on Sketchup because the better I got with it, the more it seemed liked it would never be the best (or even an adequate) solution for what I am trying to learn to do, which is manage a complex construction design and build with associated drawings in the real world. With BricsCAD, I'm pretty sure its the right solution for me, but I am finding it to be the hardest piece of software I've ever tried to learn.

Michael Mayer

I think for me Bricscad will be the solution in the future.
It goes into the right direction and develops reasonably fast.

For me the whole Solids and Direct Modeling stuff was pretty intuitive.
But beside the Autocad behaviors, there are even some of the newer
features a bit more complicated to learn/use than I would like, too.

RSW

@andrewhockley said:
I gave up on Sketchup because the better I got with it, the more it seemed liked it would never be the best (or even an adequate) solution for what I am trying to learn to do, which is manage a complex construction design and build with associated drawings in the real world. With BricsCAD, I'm pretty sure its the right solution for me, but I am finding it to be the hardest piece of software I've ever tried to learn.

Sketchup is nice for conceptual design work, as you already noticed once you get into really detailed stuff like complex assemblies or constructions it is either lacking the proper tools or it takes way to much effort to make it work. It is one of the reasons why I didn't bother to continue with Sketchup in the past.

BricsCAD is probably one of the better all in one solutions out there if you work in multiple disciplines as it can do generic drafting/modelling, mechanical and BIM and a bit of civil. It needs to mature (sometimes quite) a bit more but it seems to be heading into the right direction so far.

RSW

@avc said:
Holywar topic

--- No real chain dimension, just separate single dimensions

Not true. Is there a _dimbaseline and a _dimcontinue

Though this will generate what looks like a chain dimension, the dimension parts are actually still separate dimensions and not one a single object as what I think @Arno was probably trying to say.

Michael Mayer

° That was my experience too ....