Greetings to all from South Africa. It’s been interesting to read the varying, yet mostly agreed upon, opinions and perspectives. I find that the topic of “2D vs 3D” contains a myriad of facets that can be considered or would be influential towards the topic. I certainly do not presume to understand all those facets. Some facets that come to mind, which might add to this discussion, are as follows.
Communication - I have noted, in this thread, that there are various services offered by the contributors. However I do feel that whether one is constructing a building or whether it is a skateboard ramp or even product design etc, one needs to communicate the idea to others who are involved. Communication is an entire field of discussion in itself as one can get into the depths of verbal, visual, aural communication etc. One certainly wouldn’t verbalise a point to a deaf person for example. The form of communication is dependent on various factors, which is the point I raise for consideration. When detailing a building, one needs to communicate the total design from a macro scale to a micro scale. This is further complicated by who is being communicated with and what portion of the design is relevant to them. As a further example, one could model an entire building with every fixing illustrated (what an undertaking that would be). However, to then expect a contractor to now do a slow painful walk-through of the building counting every nut and bolt might not be accepted by the industry. As mentioned in this thread several times - most of us are looking at ways of reducing our workload while achieving the goal. A schedule (2D drawing or spreadsheet or graph etc) would make more sense in quantifying minute details such as these.
Multiple Dimensions - It was pointed out in this thread that SketchUp creates 3D visualisations by implementing 2D triangles in association with each other. This is perhaps a pedantic point but a humorous one nonetheless. 2D lines are constructed of individual dots linked together and 3D images are constructed of 2D planes associated together. This seems to suggest that even a single dimension communication could be valuable. With some forward thinking, as others have premised in this threaded, perhaps 4D communication will become valuable as technology advances.
Architectural Services (& finances) - In South Africa, we have regulated services and fee structures (along with a code of conduct). A standard design/build contract contains 6 stages of service. Each stage has a fee associated. As wonderful as the concept is, that buildings should be entirely designed, detailed and communicated in 3D, it does not make financial sense in terms of the fees associated with the service being offered. The design stage (being stage 2) and the technical documentation stage (being stage 4) have different requirements of the professional, which the associated fee is intended to adequately compensate for (in terms of the time and effort required for that service). Then of course, as others have mentioned, there is the ominous Local Authority requirements in terms of planning permits. “Oi vei” that is perhaps an entire discussion of it’s own - getting government to take a step forward is like… add your own metaphor or similarly here.
Drafting Regulations - We also have drafting (draughting) regulations in South Africa, which contain specific requirements. These would need to be overhauled in order to accommodate the new 3D world that is envisaged in this thread.
I’m sure there are many more considerations that should be added to the few that I’ve raised. So these are given purely to add to the discussion. As for me I am on the path of trying to become as efficient as possible by getting work-flow processes to automatically communicate data (on a bi-directional basis) between the various software platforms I use (e.g. 3D-2D-3D). Perhaps Autodesk is on the best track at present. However I simply find their pricing exhorbitant.
… i’ll find it in a bit) so i just left it at numerical input for height/width since, at least in this actual implementation, there’s nothing to scale to.
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