[agla]

FYI,

I read that they are discontinuing windows XP, so only those that are already out at the computer manufacturers will be available. Once they are sold, that's it. If you don't want Vista, don't wait too long.

[schleng]

So if his drawings are hand drawn over your digital base map, how would you be able to work on any of his designs in 3d, without doing the 3d by hand? I'm not familiar with Intuos3 drawing tablet.

Susan

[schleng]

Agla,
Thanks, that's a good point. I have a workstation HP selected. It comes with XP Pro loaded along with Vista. I hadn't thought about them selling out. Thanks.

Susan

[Jim Branch]

Originally Posted by schleng

So if his drawings are hand drawn over your digital base map, how would you be able to work on any of his designs in 3d, without doing the 3d by hand? I'm not familiar with Intuos3 drawing tablet.

Susan

Sorry for the confusion. It's two separate problems. His problem is that he's tired of working in pen and pencil (all 2d). That is my main concern right now (because he's the boss).

I do all the 3d designing. When I view my work in isometric using rendering, it looks nice. But I'm unable to print exactly what I'm seeing on the screen even if I export it to a jpeg or bitmap format. If I do a screen capture and try to print it using other software, the colors are not true, it's blurry, and the lines are all jaggy. So, I'm kind of trying to solve his problem and mine at the same time by getting Corel Painter or whatever will work best for our situations.

By the way, you may still be able to get XP for quite awhile. Many manufacturers will offer it for a bit more money. People have been complaining that they don't like Vista and Microsoft will still provide XP for a bit longer because of all the protest.

Jim

[schleng]

I guess your boss has to make take the plunge and learn to design on the computer!
As far as your problem, I don't have any suggestions. I have been there, where you are looking for something that will do what you want and just can't seem to find it.....unless you want to spend a ton of money.

By the way, have you ever heard of Land F/X? I received a card in the mail from them today. I visited their website. Apparently, you design in 2d and then export it to Sketchup, where all your plants appear in 3d! Of course there are other steps...nothing can be that easy, right? The negatives is that it's pricey, not to mention that you must have AutoCad 2004 or later. In addition, the plant palette for 3d images is not that sophisticated.

Susan

[agla]

Why can't he use a tablet with CAD? It was pretty common 15 years ago.

[papercutter]

Jim, sounds like you have an issue with anti-aliasing. Is there a setting to turn that on or off? That should solve your jagged line on export issue, or just increasing the export resolution. That's all I've had to do with SketchUp to improve outputs; I'd assume those would also be available in your software?