Reply To: Illustrator vs. Photoshop for Rendering Plans

[Ben Yahr]

Yup, I was “encouraged” to render that way when I started (draw a big thick line around a tree- it kind of looks like a drop shadow).

In my opinion, you can render a plan in a million different ways and have it turn out about the same, but what makes a plan good is the annotation. Notes have to be readable but not distracting, things should line up, dimensions and leaders shouldn’t cross, etc. I find its very easy to add text to a drawing in Autocad, and very easy to updated it when I change the drawing. The problem is the lack of nifty text boxes and transparency in Autocad. I’ll look into Illustrator. Last time I used it the dwg options were not available.

Not to reopen the hand vs computer discussion, but it’s amazing how much time I waste sending files back and forth between computer programs that don’t really get along. Are we really saving time?