why did you take away the detailing tools

[rcaldwell]

i just wanted to say thanks to AutoCAD for making me upgrade to 2006 ADT then taking away the detailing tools that i used every day in my job. (the softdesk package that was in 2002 ADT) i used the detail tools daily in my job and now that we have upgraded i have to go back wards to do my job. It now takes me twice as long to do a simple cut and cope of a wide flange beam. and i have to build my Rebar elevations from pline and fillet them. we used to be able to just select the Rebar size and tell it to draw an elevation and it took care of everything, e.g. size of bar development, radius etc. While yes the 2006 program has some great features, the simple one you have taken away are two big steps backward. not everyone draws in 3d or has a need too. if there is something i missed in the installation of the program i would love to hear about it as this is costing me more time than it is saving me. you can contact me at my email address if you have any good suggestions.

[Wanderer]

i just wanted to say thanks to AutoCAD for making me upgrade to 2006 ADT then taking away the detailing tools that i used every day in my job. (the softdesk package that was in 2002 ADT) i used the detail tools daily in my job and now that we have upgraded i have to go back wards to do my job. It now takes me twice as long to do a simple cut and cope of a wide flange beam. and i have to build my Rebar elevations from pline and fillet them. we used to be able to just select the Rebar size and tell it to draw an elevation and it took care of everything, e.g. size of bar development, radius etc. While yes the 2006 program has some great features, the simple one you have taken away are two big steps backward. not everyone draws in 3d or has a need too. if there is something i missed in the installation of the program i would love to hear about it as this is costing me more time than it is saving me. you can contact me at my email address if you have any good suggestions.rcaldwell... I'm going to move this from the skunkwerx forum to this one, as I believe it will be better served here. Thank you. :)

[Steve_Bennett]

Have you looked at the Detail Component Manager? I did not use use 2002/ADT3.3, but from what I understand this is the direct equivalant.

[rcaldwell]

i have looked into the detail component manager yes. As i said 2006 has great functions but they took away some of the basic functions that made the job of most detail drafters much simpler. i work for a structural firm so most of my work is detailing, so by taking those tools away it has increased my work load to produce the same type of drawing i created a year ago. from a detailing standpoint 3D take to much time to produce to turn around and then covert to2d.

[Tom Weir]

I believe the Detail Component Manager is the updated details module. They kept the old module until ADT2005 as a separate install. Now it has been redone. I used the Softdesk Details modules since 1987 so know it very well. We are lucky to have anything at all since Autodesk tried dearly to kill the details module (imho) ater they bought Softdesk.
We do see that the Detail Utilities are gone. We never used the coping function much anyway so haven't been bothered by that. But we notice that the AEC Modfiy Tools can do almost the same thing (using the Subtract option) although the fillet is missing for the rat hole.
The one function we notice that has changed for the worse is that we cannot draw rebar in elevation anymore. We have a thread running on that now, and are adding that to the wish-list area. That's a major oversight on Autodesk's part.

But other than that we do not see much difference yet that we do not like. Can you be more specific about what other functinality you find missing?

Tom Weir
Los Angeles

[cholmes]

I agree that they took away some of the functions, but what specific items are you needing? Some of the things there is simply a different way to do it, others, like the rebar elevation, are gone for some unknown reason.
Coping a beam, for example, can still be done. Select all of the beam linework, right click, aec modify tools, subtract. At the prompt to select linework, you can hit enter to select none, and then draw in the rectangle the size you want. (you can also draw in the rectangle, or closed polyline first, and select it when asked to select lnework. This option will allow you to make any odd shapes you want. You can even have the fillet already done)

Now granted, this isn't quite as easy as before, but it's not exactly difficult either.

If you dig around, a lot of the stuff can still be done. Rebar assemblies are still there for example, and they are better because it comes in as one block.

[rcaldwell]

i will agree that 2006 is a great program with lots of new and improved functions. BUT taking away the Rebar in elevation was a major goof on auto-cad's part, true you can use the detail compo net manger to draw a concrete wall complete with the Rebar. But you cannot draw a wall with a footing attached to it or a slab attaching off it with corner bars. i agree with you tom that was a big step backward. as to tools that are gone that i used regularly cut and cope steel, concrete key ways, slots and probably several others i cant think of at the moment.

Autodesk tried doing this once before and found out that people still use a lot of these tools, maybe they out to put them out as an additional install like express tools were?? i have looked at 2002 , 2004 and 2006 ADT and they have slowly taken the tools away so that people might not notice them gone.