Please, need advice for a design app.

[igucl]

Hi, everyone. I'm in a bit of a bind here. We need to do some perspective drawings of glass enclosures, and we can't get it right by hand. This isn't something we do a lot of in our business.

I was thinking that if we had a relatively simple drawing program that could take a shape, turn it into 3-D, and allow one to rotate it to the desired perspective, we could do this pretty easily. But it would have to be a Windows-based program, and I don't know what's out there.

Any recommendations are appreciated, because I don't where to start. Thanks.

 

[Blue Velvet]

This isn't something we do a lot of in our business.

In that case, you may find the Illustrator CS2 tryout useful for simple 3D work.

30-day fully-functional demo for Mac & Windows
http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jsp#p27

It doesn't have the sophistication of specialist 3D software but its learning curve may be easier, particularly if you have some experience of vector graphics. You can map textures onto the surfaces if you like as well.

I'm reluctant to advise you to go for Carrara or something similar because of cost and complexity.

 

[daxx]

Hi, everyone. I'm in a bit of a bind here. We need to do some perspective drawings of glass enclosures, and we can't get it right by hand. This isn't something we do a lot of in our business.

I was thinking that if we had a relatively simple drawing program that could take a shape, turn it into 3-D, and allow one to rotate it to the desired perspective, we could do this pretty easily. But it would have to be a Windows-based program, and I don't know what's out there.

Any recommendations are appreciated, because I don't where to start. Thanks.

Have you thought of using Bryce? I allows you to create 3D shapes and full environments. You can rotate or change the sun to moon, you can light the scene with stars or multiple light sources, change one material into another and on and on. Check it out at http://www.daz3d.com/

 

[ATD]

You also might want to look at Blender

http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html


It's a free 3d app, I have not used it so I'm not sure how easy it is. There are a lot of apps I could suggest but they would be overkill for what you are doing.

 

[igucl]

Thank you all for the helpful input.

I will look into the suggestions you made. I knew I could count on the friendly folks of MacRumors.