CompuServe Messages

Yes, I'm well aware of AME. There's no comparison or relationship between AME and a product like FACADE, either in the kind of AutoCAD entities they work with, or in ease-of-use and performance. For the kind of easy and inexpensive architectural modeling I think was under discussion here, FACADE would win, hands-down, as would most any other AutoCAD architectural front-end that deals with 3D. FACADE doesn't use AME at all. AME offers some potential for architectural modeling that you won't get with a product like FACADE, in terms of the Boolean operations that are possible with it. But this is seldom a _major_ factor for modeling most aspects of architecture, and there are some definite drawbacks to working with AME solids in AutoCAD… I've not used it myself for 3DS rendering, but I'm confident that the meshes created by FACADE will work beautifully for rendering with 3DS.