Design Questionnaire

Hi guys,

The second and last of my dissertation questionnaires. This one is just for people who are regularly using SL to design and produce content. I've posted this in the building section as I figured that your the users who are producing a good slice of the content.

The aim of this questionnaire is to establish the advantages and disadvantages of using SL to design with, how it might be improved and some of the real world software some of you may be used to.

The questionnaire can be found at:

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=669784

I also have another questionnaire which alot of you have helped me out with already, so thanks for that. This can be answered by anyone and focuses more on the companies trading within SL.

This can be found at:

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=662182

Thanks alot

Adam

The 3rd Question has the Option 'Alias' twice.
That's Maya, isn't it ?

Thanks for that...

I believe Alias and Maya are two softwares from the same autodesk. I've always referred to it as Alias but you might be correct.

http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/support/index.jsp

Thanks for your help guys...

I've had 35 responses for my previous questionnaire and 10 for the latest "Design questionnaire". If there's anyone else who are to still to fill it in then it would really help me out. It'll only take a few minutes of your time. 5 minutes max.

Thanks

Adam

Alias is the name of the company that makes Maya. It was at one time the name of a program, but that hasn't been true in many years. Alias (the program) was in many ways the precursor to Maya. The two coexisted for about a year or so, but when Maya really came into its own, Alias (the company) stopped making Alias (the program). That was around 1999 or so. No one would be using Alias (the program) today.

Alias (the company) was bought by Autodesk last year.

Parts of Alias (the program) that didn't make it into Maya evolved into another program called Studio Tools. It seems Autodesk is now calling this program AliasStudio.

In any case, be careful what you're calling a CAD program. While CAD technically stands for Computer Aided Design, which is pretty open ended, the name has been adopted to mean programs that are intended for drafting, architecture, and engineering. Programs used more commonly for artwork and animation are not generally referred to as CAD programs.

Of the eight programs you have listed, only 4 are what most people consider to be CAD applications, and that's only if you want to be generous to Rhino. Solidworks, Pro Engineer, and AutoCAD are the only ones that really fit the bill.

Photoshop and Illustrator are absolutely not CAD programs; they're 2D art programs.

3D Studio Max is a 3D art program. It's capable of importing drawings from AutoCAD and reinterpreting them as meshes, but it's not really the same thing.

Alias, back when it existed, was used in certain CAD applications (if you bought an American car in the 90's, your dash board was modeled in Alias), but its primary use was for films and games. Its successor, Maya, is likewise used primarily for fim and game work, not so much for CAD work.

AliasStudio is kind of an oddball. It's hard to define what category it fits into. I'd say the best description is it's something that works alongside CAD programs, but it's not a full blown CAD program itself.

You might want to refine your list a bit, and maybe lose the term "CAD" since engineering applications don't really seem to be what you're asking about.

Thanks for feedback.

I don't think its important as such that they are not all CAD packages as such, the main of the question is to find out different users experience of different software packages. However it might be suitable to change the user of the word CAD.

Adam