[englandmademe]

Hi

I am designing a brochure to help sell a block of flats that needs to contain the floor plans for each of the four flats. I think I will get the architects drawings, but what is the easiest way for me to re-create these plans. I imagine there must be some specialist software/shareware that would do the job rather than manually creating everything in illustrator!

I'm using Max OS X, Quark 4.1 and illustrator 10

Any help would be much appreciated.

[siliconwarrior]

'Fraid not.

Scan it in and draw over the top in Illustrator.

[englandmademe]

That's quite surprising - looks like I'm in for more work than I thought!

thanks for the reply.

[art_director]

If the architect has the plans in Autocad (sp) you can get the files and open them in Illustrator. Then import them into whatever app you're creating your brochure in.

[dennisbolt]

Most any architectural or drawing/drafting software will require the same amount of drawing time (or more) as either Illustrator or Freehand. The benefits of a dedicated architectural program is the ability to draw to various scales, 3d model, and make job specific templates etc etc.......

But for your more "simplified" needs........

....and if you want it to be faster, than you probably should scan the drawings or convert them into a photoshop file.

But I would imagine that for a brochure, you don't need/want all the misc. notes that architectural drawings contain. I would bring them into your Illustrator and simplify them into "faster to read" shapes and spaces.

[englandmademe]

Many thanks for the replies on this topic, this has helped me.

[art_director]

Originally posted by englandmademe:
Many thanks for the replies on this topic, this has helped me.

What did you end up doing?

[englandmademe]

Unfortunately this job has now fallen through [arghh!] - but at least in future I know that I can either try and get Autocad files or just re-draw in Ilustrator.

You'd think someone would have developed a not-too-complicated 2D professional app for the mac where you can create simple floor plans by dragging and dropping items onto your design such as door openings, walls, sinks, WC etc. and then save as an eps to pull into quark/indesign.

Oh well. thanks again.

[storer]

Microsoft Visio for Windows does this quite well, but I don't think there is a Mac version.

[eyevaan]

I realize reading the thread this is dead for now but check out OmniGrafflePro. It is an amazing workflow program with an amped amount of customization available. Worth test driving.

The main difference between the basic and pro is the layer handling. I prefer the pro version.