Working with the Freehand tool, best practise

[Andre Baros]

I recently adjusted my workflow to include a Wacom Tablet instead of a mouse... and the only application (other than the obvious Photoshop) which I had installed which seamed to really extend my capabilities with it was Architectural Studio. So I printed some DWF (which we've never used before because we've had very erratic print results) and played around with them for a project in Studio and found it amazing. When I tried Studio when it first came out it seamed pretty stupid actually, but this time around it was very useful. I would go so far as to say that the design was better than it would have been on paper because I could more fluidly go though schemes sketched right over my Revit DWF's.

Unfortunately Studio has been abandoned by Autodesk (too early for it's market...)

So I'm evaluating other options to take a PDF or DWF and sketch over it. I don't need a markup tool, I need a design tool. Design Review seamed like a logical choice because it can round trip to Revit and I was hoping that as the successor to Studio, it might have some things in common. No dice so far.

First road block. The freehand markup tool is based on vectors not bitmaps and produced results which are completely useless. I've tried Illustrator, Photoshop, Microsoft Journal, PDF Revu, Art Rage, Sketchbook Pro, and of course Studio, and Design Review has by far the worst results (Acrobat is nearly as useless in this department)

So my question is: Is there a way to fix/adjust the tool to work better? Or is there a better tool to use. Ultimately if I have to use another program and import a PNG back to Revit, I might as well just print to paper, sketch over the print, and scan the sketches back in.

Also, what is the policy for getting dead software from Autodesk? If I want to get another copy of Architectural Studio is there any way? Is Sketchbook Pro going to get DWF support any time soon?

Thanks

[jhohman]

Seems Autodesk prefers to force an upgrade to an inferior software and there fore abandons any knowledge of a previous (wasn't broke so we fixed it, best of luck to you) software. At least that's my opinion.

[scott.sheppard]

We're a business. If more people felt that AutoSketch was superior, we would have kept selling it. We enjoy making money. Unfortunately people like Andre were in the minority. We do consider customer feedback in our planning processes though. Perhaps easy to use tools like AutoSketch will make a comeback.

[Andre Baros]

Yeah, I really didn't mean to make this a negative post. Architectural Studio 3.1 (not AutoSketch) was before it's time and didn't have an audience, not to mention that the TabletPC technology to go with it was in it's infancy. My reason for mentioning it wasn't to bash the business decision to cut it off, but to describe what I'm looking for. I can't get Architectural Studio anymore so I'm looking for an alternative or a better way to us Design Review.

Design review has the organizational tools and workflow that I'm looking for, but it doesn't have the markup tools that I want. In schematic design, I mark up my own drawings, so the great note tools in Design Review don't help much. I need to be able to sketch over an elevation quickly and get a decent looking new fenestration or sketch over a plan and then bring that back into Revit as a guide in drawing a new plan configuration. We need a freehand tool with a raster option, line weights, and transparency.

The other aspect of Architectural Studio which I miss in Design review is the trace paper. Not layers in a cad sense, but layers in a schematic sense.

Thanks.