Rendering programs for AutoCAD site plans

[Anonymous]

Can anyone recommend any good programs for rendering site plans?  I am not that impressed with Autodesk Impression.  Right now, my firm uses Photoshop and Illustrator but are there others?  I am interested in adding gradients to hatches, plant symbols, etc 

Thanks-

[Jason T. Radice]

I used to use M-Color and I loved it. The AutoCAD plug-in software works by creating closed polylines and it automatically fills them by layer. Using pre-formatted templates for prototype buildings and a standardized palette, I was able to crank out three different site plans in a day with this as coloring is pretty much instantaneous. All you do is plot to M-color as you would a PDF. The images (I usually used PDF) are also very small, making it very easy to e-mail. I tried to get my last employer to bite on it, as it would have at least doubled productivity over hand drawing and coloring in archaic Corel and later photoshop. And because you can use a standardized palette, all of your output is consistent. 

http://www.m-color.com/

[Anonymous]

Thanks, my current boss has used M-Color before.  I am currently downloading a trial version of Vectorworks Landmark.  How well does M-Color work with AutoCADs with xref’ed aerial photos?  Can you or anyone else recommend other programs?  Thanks again!

[Robert Anderson]

While Landmark will most likely give you all the flexibility you will need if you are only preparing site plans, make sure you check out Renderworks add on for VW Landmark. With Landmark you can easily add gradients, tiles and even change opacity either by class or for each polygon.

[Author]

Posts