In a world where computers have become a daily necessity for children, students and adults, companies come up with different sorts of software which is meant to ease and facilitate our work. Some of these software programs focus on design and this articles deals with two of these programs: Autocad 2008 academic and Autodesk 3DS Max 2008.



Autodesk is a world leader in 2D and 3 D design software, being used for manufacturing, building and construction. Autocad is a set of Cad software products which are used in dimensional design and drafting, this software being developed and sold by Autodesk Inc. Initially, the concept of Autocad was to propel customization and other features but the software was quite expensive. Nowadays, Autocad 2008 academic has a number of application programming interfaces used for customization. Autocad 2008 academic promotes daily drafting and it is endowed with new features which are meant to facilitate daily tasks. Some of the most important features of Autocad 2008 academic are: annotation scaling, layers per viewport, enhanced tables and text and table enhancements.

Autocad 2008 academic comes up with the concept of annotation scale as an object property. Thus, designers can easily set the scale of a model space view and afterwards they can apply the respective scale to each object, mentioning its size, placement and appearance. The second feature, layers per viewport, enables users to specify the color, the line weigh and the line type for a certain viewport. The enhanced tables allow users to combine Autocad and Excel tabular information into a single table. Thus, the users can select ands update the information they need in both documents. The text and table enhancements allow users to specify the number of columns that are necessary and to put new texts between those columns. These Autocad 2008 academic features not only increase speed and accuracy, but they also help you save some precious time.

Vertical programs allow designers to draw 3 D objects such as walls, doors, etc. and Autodesk 3DS Max 2008 is such a program. Autodesk 3DS Max 2008 represents the latest software version used for 3 D modeling, rendering and animation. This software enables designers from all over the world to overcome difficulties related to 3 D modeling. Furthermore, Autodesk 3DS Max 2008 increases the productivity of the artists, allowing them to achieve higher levels in a shorter period of time. This software is equipped with improved viewing and handling of larger scenes, new options for faster modeling, new review toolset, improvements in the mental ray workflow and new enhancements for complex workflows and pipelines.

The new technology of Autodesk 3DS Max 2008 allows the modeling of larger and more complex scenes consisting of tens of thousands of objects. Thus, artists can select and transform objects much faster. The improved modeling options provide artists a streamlined workflow, which helps them focus on the creative process. The mental ray workflow simplifies indoor scenes while the integrated MAXScript ProEditor enables the author scripting for automation and customization of 3 DS Max. The common tasks such as selection, material assignment, grouping and others can be realized much faster with the help of Autodesk 3DS Max 2008.