Page 156 - Enhancing CAD Drawings with Photoshop

4386.book Page 139 Monday, November 15, 2004 3:27 PM

Chapter 5

Presenting Plans

Designers in all professions use plans as their single most common form of graphical communication.
If you are an architect, an engineer, a contractor, an industrial designer, or a real estate developer or
are in any other profession that uses measured drawings every day, chances are, the ability to read
plans has become part of your subconscious mind.
It is easy to assume that showing plans to your clients should communicate your design intent to
them as clearly as you understand it. However, it can be helpful to step back a moment and realize
that not everyone is trained to read plans. Understanding orthogonal (or orthographic) projection line
drawings (which are really what plans are) is not necessarily an intuitive skill. Remember that we
never actually experience “plans” as humans physically inhabiting spaces—instead, plans are
abstractions.
Photoshop is a wonderful tool for making plans legible to almost everyone. By adding tonality,
color, pattern, and shadow, plans are transformed into beautiful images that your clients can imme-
diately understand. By enhancing CAD drawings, Photoshop can help you effectively communicate
your design intent and thereby improve your organization’s marketing potential. This chapter’s topics
include:
◆ Preparing Plans in AutoCAD

◆ Transferring Multilayer Drawings to Photoshop
◆ Using Patterns
◆ Layer Style Techniques
◆ Laying Out Plans on a Sheet

Preparing Plans in AutoCAD
The process of preparing plans for Photoshop begins in a CAD program. I will be using AutoCAD 2005
in the tutorials in this chapter. However, all the CAD sample files on this book’s companion CD are
saved in AutoCAD 2000’s drawing (.dwg) format, so you can use an earlier version of AutoCAD or
another CAD program that can read this format. Although the steps won’t exactly match the proce-
dure given here if you are using another program, the essence is the same.