Besides offering early-stage designing and BIM tools on a collaborative platform, the following are the advantages of using TAD.
TAD helps senior architects flesh out a design right from very early stages
TAD does NOT enforce any methodology for designing. You have the same freedom as in your doodles and initial sketches on paper
TAD does not entangle the architect with lots of commands and things to learn about the computer. Practically all the commands are based on the logic of going about creating a building on your actual site. There are no references to drawings, graphical entities (entitie? huh? what is that?) You deal directly on the logical volume of space or built-matter that is on your mind.
Other CAD/BIM systems forces you to first “decompose” the logical shape in your mind into the graphical sub-components. You would have thoughts in your mind such as “ok, I need a bedroom here. So this bedroom has 3 straigth lines in plan, and one side is curved–now where is that “line” command” Where is that “curve” command?“ People who work in TAD say “I need a bedroom here” and TAD Designer gives a starting shape – which you later on modify at your own will
TAD respects the to-and-fro that happens in designing. We have given object-oriented undo which means, each logical object (architectural element or part thereof) preserves its own undo history. Say you edited one element, say the “livingRoom” and then went about creating/editing other objects in your design. Then you realize that you need to undo the edit you had done on “livingroom” but you do not want to lose what happened after that. No problem in TAD Designer. You just shift to the “livingroom” and specifically undo just that; leaving the rest of the changes same as before
TAD allows any number of iterations as you flesh out your design. You may go back and forth, hesitating between various concerns of the design. Should I keep the “guestbed” on the first floor? Or is it best kept on the “second floor”? No problem in being hesitant and hazy. TAD allows you to do all that
TAD offers probing (analytics) at the very inception of design projects. For example, you can calculate floor space index and energy consumption while preparing concept design. The TAD platform on the web, encourages people to develop probes that can be plugged into those designs that require them. Over time, we are confident you will get a lot of probes (apps to those who want to use Android or iPhone terminologies) The advantage of these probes is that in the initial stages you are pointed more or less in the right direction (for example; the quantities would be approximately correct – in case it was quantities that you were probing for) Later, as you flesh out the design more accurately, the results of the probe also starts becoming highly accurate
TAD even helps in iterations, by allowing you to place any number of properties (of any kind, any number) on any logical element of the design. TAD does not put blinkers around your eyes, and force you to think of only the properties that the software company (which is us) who made the software. Not at all. You can even place a property onto an object which makes sense in your design – it could be completely unique, one-off situation that you were facing when designing. Architectural designing is full of that – we call it just-in-time modeling where often the architect is made to consider a point that suddednly crops up
Talking about iterations once again: While designing you may proceed quite into the design only to realize that the design did not meet your initial higher level objectives. We call such an architect a potter at work. So, in some situations, you may actually have to dismantle large parts of your design (metaphorically, the potter breaks up the pot being made on the wheel, and starts all over again) TAD Designer allows this large jumps very easily – getting back to the earlier stages than where you are now is not frustrating. You would not be staring a laboriously constructed building model, with lot of detailing which results in a serious reluctance in your office to start once again
Because it is so easy to start any design quite raw in TAD Designer, then proceed towards its finaliziation, we have found that with TAD Designer, one can really produce a lot of alternatives for the same project
TAD gives you quite good, and extremely fast draft views of your design – all you need to do is to change the 2D shapes into 3D and set in the “location” and “lookat” points. You can easily refresh the 3D view to reflect the current changes
The sizes of files in TAD are very, very small. That is why when you save the project – it goes over to your web account on our website in a jiffy.
TAD is also made for collaborative designing. More than one architects/professionals could be working on the same project at the same time. Changes made by the one would be reflected in everyone else's computer in more or less real time
The reasons for the above benefits
TAD uses an object-oriented designing tool called TAD Designer. All the shapes that you create in TAD Designer are objects, which can be grouped in classes. TAD provides a structured designing platform. The object-oriented designing approach enables you to index and archive each element of your design projects.
TAD works only on well-formed objects and thus maps each object created in TAD with elements of design, reducing the chances of making errors in the final stages of design projects, such as errors in quantity take-off and costing.
TAD is both a solid and a surface modeling tool using some very simple, yet unique mathematics. It requires less computation and memory resources compared with other designing applications, facilitating creation of complex designs. Due toe the terseness of the data (often in just kilobytes) TAD easily works over the Internet
TAD uses a very intutive, cleverly written chatting software based on the standard XMPP platform that not only allows chatting but also assits in collabaration
TAD supports a programming environment called ARDELA (ARchitectural DEsign LAnguage), which facilitates creation of routines to objectively analyze and designing of objects of any shape. ARDELA is used to develop lots of applications using the TAD platform
Post-design, TAD allows architects to easily export their design files to a number of standard CAD and BIM file formats.
TAD offers a very simple, easy-to-learn, and intuitive designing interface.