Good use for the view cube

[Andre Baros]

I never thought that I would say it, but Ecotect could use the view cube. 3D navigation is pretty counter intuitive.

[kyle.bernhardt]

Good point Andre. I will add that to our overhaul list.

Cheers,
Kyle B

[Andre Baros]

Overhaul list...
After having Ecotect and IES installed for years I've given up on the holy grail of moving data from Revit to those programs and am trying to learn Ecotect as a stand along design tool. One idea that stands out is that Revit is business as usual done better while Ecotect is a whole new game. For example, space. Architects design spaces, engineers walk around in spaces, and engineers analyse space, but BIM tools focus on the pieces around those spaces. I really apprciate Ecotects (and for that matter any such tools) approach to defining spaces (zones).

In Revit I had a small theatre space I wanted to do some studies of. It was completely enclosed but Revit had trouble finding the boundry (had something to do with what level my room tag was on for a space which spaned multiple levels) all I could do was move and add walls, or room deviding lines, or floors and roofs. I couldn't grab the room and simply pick the elements which define it. I couldn't select the space. This isn't water tight in Ecotect either, but conceptually much more sound.

On the other hand, working in Ecotect sometimes feels like going back to Cad in the late 90's. Shudder.

Nice shinny new title there Kyle, congratulations.


EDIT: One idea I'm overlooking here is the massing tools in Revit, which could be used to define individual spaces for design purposes but which can't actually be used to define rooms. Ironic. Nor can they be exported for analysis. Unfortunate.

[cctvcaac]

I agree with your point. And there is another problem, the current gbXML is not very perfect for translating over BIM and analysis software.
But I think Ecotect is simply than CAD, especially in the function editing the node, very simply but strong enough!

[jon.gardzelewski]

I actually prefer Ecotect navigation in some ways. However with the latest release the right-mouse goes up in Visualize but down in 3D Editor. This inconsistancy is really confusing and I can't find where the settings are to change this. Has anyone else seen/fixed this?