Would any of our friends, including those involved with magazine publishing, care to offer their observations and comments regarding the ease of using some of the current graphics programs for museum and display related tasks that do not require full CAD level capabilities?

Specific examples of possible project uses in the railroad museum field might be a selection as follows:

Drawing locomotive, truck, or machinery cross sections or cutaways.

Creating line drawings of railroad structures.

Laying out the floor plan for a display area.

Creating a 3-D concept drawing of a display area.

My own preference has been toward Adobe Illustrator due to its greater interchangeability of formats with CAD programs we use in the industry and its direct relation to InDesign. I usually then go to PhotoShop for processes like filtration and colorizing, then use PowerPoint or other display media for final showing. Certain simple tasks seem much easier to do in Visio, particularly floor layouts. However some folks tell me they prefer Corel Designer (or the old Micrografx Designer) as being quicker to work with than Adobe Illustrator.

Do any of you have thoughts to offer on this? The objective here is to try to get the best productivity out of the time that you have available to spend on developing designs and interpretive devices for exhibits.

Thanks,

PC

I’m an electronic/project engineer and have been trained on several flavors of AutoCAD for work, mostly building prints, communications layouts and such. However I’m an old timer that still prefers to use a pencil with a drafting machine when I can get away with it.
When I started to do graphics work for the IRM I was unhappy with the conversions the vinyl shops were making from CAD. Also found it much better to give files to the people publishing, making prints etc. in the format they most used. That was, and is, Adobe Illustrator.
I was able to self teach myself to use Illustrator in a fairly short time (with a little help from some artist friends). I now prefer it's ease of use so much to CAD I do most of my engineering work in Illustrator. I have also noticed that over time AutoCad has incorporated many features available in Illustrator years ago.
However I must say that I do not use it for 3D, or detail mechanical drawings, as I do not do much of that type of drawing.

I've been using Illustrator as those are the files that my supplier for the vinyl masks accept. (such as those for the Lackawanna F units).
Surprisingly, the company that cut the front number plates also readily accepted the native .ai file. I had tried to do an illustrator export to a autocad file and was getting a lot of strange results.
I learned with the Macromedia Freehand program years ago, which still remains 10x more intuitive than Illustrator but Adobe killed it when they purchased Macromedia. Now I still draw in Freehand and export to Illustrator.

Rich

An interesting point that Rich brought up here in mentioning Freehand, which is quite a good program and was usually bundled in the Dreamweaver MX Studio Suite. I had overlooked it as nowadays we tend to concentrate our efforts around Illustrator, which is pretty much the industry standard right now.

If you were to get ahold of an old copy of Dreamweaver MX Studio you are getting Freehand with it, actually quite a bargain compared with the inflated prices of some of the newer product bundles. I put this package on a Windows 7 computer a little while back and it installed and operated properly.

Who knows, if more copies of Dreamweaver MX Studio were circulating around the industry a few outfits might even be able to get their websites up to date. Well we can at least hope.

PC

In my experience, Illustrator has been the choice of professionals, while Corel stuff tends to be more consumer or "prosumer" oriented.

One of the strengths of Illustrator is its interoperability with Photoshop, Fireworks and Indesign, the other cornerstones of professional design.

It sounds to me like you want a good CAD package, not illustrator software.

Those who know me will know that I run a shop that uses three different CAD/Graphics packages, each used where it best fits:

AutoCAD for part design and general mold layouts
MasterCAM for tool path generation to cut both mold cavities and EDM electrodes
Adobe Illustrator for lettering art; also instruction sheet and magazine ad layout

I am proficient in the first two, and leave the third strictly alone. Software where you cannot specify a circle by it's center point and radius just drives me nuts. I have seen some very nice equipment drawings done in AI, and I just don't know how the guy does it; it seems to be the long way 'round the barn to me.

Since you likely will never need true 3D solid capability, any low end CAD package ought to do for you. Most all CAD software these days either uses, or will output in AutoCAD's DXF (Data eXchange Format). Adobe Illustrator reads DXF files pretty much flawlessly, so CAD drawings can form the basis for illustration art that needs more embellishment.

When we were in need of illustrator software sixteen or seventeen years ago, we compared AI to Coral Draw. At the time AI meant getting a Mac to run it, while all our CAD software was DOS/Windows only, but we were warned off Coral by the service bureaus that would output our files to film, as they had numerous problems with Coral conversions. Right at that moment, Adobe released Illustrator for Windows, making their software truly cross platform, and we bought AI and never looked back. I would assume since Coral is still around, they have solved those problems, but AI is still the gold standard for work that needs to be image set.

Dennis, you are correct that some of the "mission" involves factors that would normally relate to AutoCAD, such as working with locomotive cross sections and system diagrams. But the ultimate goal is to interpret the vehicle as already constructed rather than to design or redesign it, and I have found that while AutoCAD handles the technical aspects of the illustration well, it falls short when you try to incorporate shading, colors, various line weights for emphasis, or colorize systems to show fluid flow.

So yes, when an AutoCAD resourse is available as a starting point it speeds up the process, but the objective of the exercise is to produce presentation graphics suitable for display.

I am working on one project tonight based on a common HEP engine that started as an AutoCAD drawing, presently cleaning it up and editing in Illustrator, will take it to Photoshop to colorize and produce the TIFF and JPEG images, the final display medium may be PowerPoint so that I can arrange transitions for the callouts that identify various components of the machinery.

One other concern here is staying within reasonable financial restraints regarding what is going into the projects. You can justify Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop or Corel Designer because they have so many other potential uses. Licensing an AutoCAD installation so you can do a limited amount of volunteer work for museums gets pretty tough to justify.

PC

Preston,

I wasn't suggesting that you go out and buy a seat of AutoCAD, just trying to explain that it is often easier to start in CAD rather than Illustrator. The problem I've had with Adobe Illustrator is that the entire program is based on Bezier curves, which are great when you need to poke and prod a free-form curve to smoothly connect a series of points; not so when you simply want to draw a circle. In fact, you can't even draw a circle in AI; you have to draw an ellipse with the major and minor axes equal, and then you still can't specify it's center point. Watching our graphics guy work in AI drives me nuts; everything is drag and drop, and if it looks close enough on the screen, it is, sort of, I guess. I, for one, can't work that way, and I suspect anyone with a background in technical drawing will feel the same way.

I find the easiest way to do 3D illustrations is to model the part in CAD, rotate it to the angle I want to view it from, then take the view into Illustrator. As long as it's a CAD model, hidden lines are a problem, and line work and surfaces are difficult to edit. Once the view is imported into AI, it's all just lines in 2D, and the graphics guy can trim, erase, or modify anything he wants.

2D CAD has come to the point where there is free software available, and 3D CAD that can do wireframes is relatively cheap. I just can't make a recommendation because I've owned a couple seats of AutoCAD for years, and so haven't been in the market. However, I occasionally see discussion of low end software in the CAD/CAM forum here:

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cad-cam/

Dennis, thanks for your excellent information. This is all very helpful in trying to make the best use of the time and effort in reworking various manufacturers artwork into display graphics suitable for museum use.

I should add that it is sometimes very worthwhile to approach a company or builder to see if they will give you access to an AutoCAD drawing as a starting point for building an information display. In some cases if you may can describe pretty much the item you want and find a helpful person with the authority to release information, they may be able to provide exactly the "missing link" that you need. When you are looking at making a graphic of something relatively complex like an information display on a modern locomotive, having a drawing as a starting point can save a lot of time and effort.

PC

CAD SOFTWARE:

My impression of AutoCAD is that its core constituency makes "Drawings", which are a legal document, part of a contract between fabrication shop and customer. AutoCAD revolutionized that world of course, making their name. But they've stayed loyal to that wealthy constituency and have resisted changes in the market, such as 3D.

Now, common PCs can do 3-D rendering easily. CNC is everywhere now, and cheap. People don't want to deal with all the expensive eyeballs on drawings, they want to go directly from 3-D model to toolpath. Neither is AutoCAD's thing.

Making things takes three steps: CAD - CAM - CUT.

The first step, CAD "Computer Aided Design", happens in 2D (Adobe Illustrator) or 3D (SolidWorks or Sketchup.) You are actually modeling the thing to be made, not making a traditional drawing. If you rotate it and it looks wrong, then it is wrong. It's like in Word, don't use spaces to line up columns, because if you change fonts it falls apart. The model must be right.

Next is "Computer Aided Manufacturing". Here you import the model into a different program such as Cut2D or Cut3D, and you work out toolpaths that make sense. Make strokes consecutive. Make sure the plasma cutter never traverses its own cuts. Even out feed rate. Normalize cut direction (climb vs conventional). Insert breakaway tabs so th work stays still. The result is a list of toolhead moves.

Next is CUTting. The list goes into software like Mach3 which actually drives the stepper motors on the machine. Here is where you find "0,0,0" on the work and run the moves. This is also your final opportunity to deal with feeds and speeds. And then you watch and listen, ready to hit the STOP button.

Some commercial products integrate CAM/CUT into proprietary software.

ILLUSTRATION SOFTWARE:

2D: Adobe Illustrator AND NOT COREL. Corel is "dead" in the marketplace. I've done everything on Corel only to find that nobody could cut me stencils, and Kinkos has been remotely deleting it the work PCs in all their stores. Everyone says "Could you convert that to Illustrator for me?" No, not when Corel is back at TechShop.

I think we've covered AutoCAD.

3D: SolidWorks is popular and good, but not free.

Google Sketchup is not quite as good as SolidWorks, but the support is better and it's FREE. 'It functions on an alternative revenue stream.' Google has found great advantage to laying 3D modeling software in the hands of massive armies of passionate amateur creators. Install Google Earth and switch on 3D buildings, and whole cities just "pop to life" and it's all the work of volunteers. The latter is an opportunity to put your organization literally on the map by installing 3D models of your buildings in Google Earth.

SOURCING SOFTWARE FOR NONPROFITS.

Adobe Illustrator is available via http://TechSoup.org for almost nothing, but your organizaton can only buy 1 suite or 4 packages per year. Ask with your peers first.

Google Sketchup is free. The Pro version can be underwritten http://earth.google.com/outreach/program_details.html

SolidWorks has student/teacher editions at 95% off retail, so find a way to be one.

Cut2D, which is CAM sofware, is $149. Cut3D is $299.

Mach3, the CUT software, charges $175, but the "demo mode" for free is fully operational, but will stop cutting after it hits the 500th line in the cut program. This is specifically so builders of homebrew CNC machines will be able to fully test before buying.