Two Brand New Products: Autodesk Impression and Photoshop Extended

It's not very often that I get the opportunity to review a brand new product, so it's always a special occasion when I do. The first version of Autodesk Impression has just been released, which is a dedicated illustration tool for producing artistic-looking renderings from plain 2D drawings in DWG or DWF format. Impression has a lot going for it, including a visually pleasing interface that is fun and easy to use and a near-infinite variety of artistic styles that allows users and firms to create their own unique signature illustrations. AECbytes starts this month by exploring the basic functionality as well as more the advanced capabilities of Autodesk Impression.

One of the limitations of Impression is that it is still primarily a tool for illustrating 2D drawings, with no special capabilities for working with 3D views. In this context, it is interesting to review the new specialized version of Photoshop—Adobe's powerful imaging tool that enjoys near ubiquity when it comes to image editing and compositing in architectural firms—called Photoshop Extended, which has been enhanced with 3D capabilities to make it more relevant to a certain number of fields, one of them being AEC.

Also on the agenda for this month is a Building the Future article that captures the highlights of Bentley’s recent “BIM for Green Buildings” Executive Summit held in New York, and two new Tips and Tricks articles, one featuring worksharing in Revit, while the other looks at how to use parametric 2D object components in ArchiCAD and the Detailer Template to work on these drawings more quickly and efficiently.

Please continue to visit the AECbytes Blog to share any of your thoughts, comments, and questions related to AECbytes articles, and see what others have to say.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > April 2007