Tuesday Two.Oh! is not meant as an endorsement, but as an exploration of the tools that are out there. Click at your own risk. 
Today on Tuesday Two.Oh! we’re going to take a look at a tool that could be useful to any professional or public citizen; basically anyone who might have a need to think about a space virtually will be able to use today’s website. Personally, I will be able to use if for many reasons- we’re buying a house, so I will be able to visualize the space virtually. Also, at work we are rethinking the Circulation area, and this will be a tool I will use in order to imagine the space- which is very restricted. Let’s take a look at Autodesk: Project DragonFly.
Find them on Twitter.
I want to tell you that I have looked for room design tools before, and haven’t really come up with the most easy to use sites. The first thing that struck me about Project DragonFly was the apparent ease of use. The homepage of the site is clean, easy to understand and uncluttered. Right off the bat, you are provided with an easy-to-comprehend run down of what to expect from the site.
From the homepage, click on
to start designing.
I did like the fact that I was able to start designing immediately- without singing up for the website. The next few things I’ll show you won’t take much narration. The site has some clunky navigation while you’re flipping through room elements, but over all I found the process to be easy. On an amusing side note, while choosing furniture you have a lot of options, but none of the options really fit my own items. I suppose that the visual elements are a suggestion rather than finding the exact match.
The first thing you’ll see is a blank canvas.
From here, you use the tool bar on the left to choose the room you would like to start from.
Building your “space” can be a little tricky, and I was unable to full recreate my desired structure. However, I think that with a little practice I would likely be able to come up with a more clear representation of what I was trying to do. That said, once you have the basics in you will have something that looks like this.
From this basic room outline, you can add doors and windows.
You will be able to choose your elements easily using the side menu.
You will have options as to which room elements you choose, but as I mentioned before the choices are somewhat limited. Though, not so limited as you won’t be able to choose something that is similar to your desired outcome.
Once you have chosen all of your elements, you will have a finished project.
This project, if you have not signed up for an account, can be printed. I clicked on “export” before I did anything else and was thusly prompted.
Since I usually sign up for the sites I demo, I decided to go ahead and sign up. I have to admit, it could not have been easier.
I was not even prompted to check my email for a confirmation link. With my account set up, I was able to use the right hand menu to share my room. My email was opened automatically with the information supplied in the body of the message.
If you desire to save your room as a .jpeg, you have that option using the export feature.
Another thing I enjoyed about the site is that if you create an account, you can save your designs in your own personal gallery. I have only one design to open currently, but as I know that I will have other projects in future I know this feature will be useful.
If you’re curious to see what other people are doing with their designs, I suggest that you check out the public gallery.
In closing, I thought this site was very useful. Though I did find some of the navigation clunky and at times confusing. The site is essentially an open book: it does what it says it is going to do. And it does it for free- which is always nice when you’re used to using programs like Visio. I did find myself wishing that the walls and door openings were a little easier to manipulate, but, again, I feel that I might be able to better tackle these things when I have used the tool for a little bit longer.
As always, I enjoy and welcome your thoughts and comments.
1 Comment
30 September 2009 at 5:54 pm
Hey, this looks like a tool that about anybody could, w0uld and should use. If it saves moving furniture more than once, I’m all for it