I'll try to be brief, but my situation may need some explaining before I can receive quality advice. I'd like to thank all who respond in advance for their help.
When I was growing up, I would buy floor plan magazines and take them home and draw them. I wanted to be an architect when I grew up, I constantly developed my own plans, drew elevations, so on and so forth. During high school, I found a job at an architects office printing. It was the early 2000's and I was able to watch the older guys draw by hand and nI developed a portfolio and applied to schools that had both architecture and Division 1 baseball programs that were interested in me.
To make a long story short I received a scholarship, both academic and athletic to NYIT in Old Westbury, to say I was excited was an understatement. When the coach found out I was planning on studying architecture, he had told me that it was impossible to play baseball and study architecture at the same time; the schedules had too many conflicts.
Another factor was that my family was directly impacted by the terror attacks on 9/11 during my senior year. Old Westbury was not too far from my home, I would have went there had it all worked out. However, I wanted to stay close to home (Staten Island, New York) and the only school offering me a decent scholarship near my home for baseball was Long Island University (which does not have an architecture program, I had never even considered going there). I had a long talk with my parents and decided that I could always draw but would not always be able to play baseball. I'd go there, play for four years during my BA and go back to school afterwards for architecture.
I met my wife at LIU, we have two amazing kids and through my baseball funded education I became a High School Science teacher and baseball coach. I received my masters degree in special education in order to secure my job and further my career as an educator.
I'm thankful for the opportunities I have been granted and everything that came along with the decisions I made concerning my education. However, it eats me up inside that I no longer draw. I find myself drawing floor plans constantly in my free time. I need an outlet to scratch this itch.
To be clear, I love my job. Being an educator is something I plan on doing until I retire. At the same time, I would love to get a certificate/degree in something architecture related to maybe pursue a part-time job.
Ideally, I would love to draw floor plans for a website that sells floor plans (or one of those magazines I used to buy as a kid)during my free time. What would I have to do to get there?
Would a drafting certificate teach me to make photo-realistic floor-plans to submit to these companies?
Do I need a degree in architecture to do this?
Are there career change/accelerated programs available?
Can I do any of these things completely online (being employed with two kids makes going to a campus difficult)?
My BA is in Sociology and Anthropology (don't ask) and my Masters is in Special Education grades 7-12.
I'd love to make myself qualified enough to develop a curriculum to teach an elective in my high school as well.
I don't know where to start or what my best route to take would be. My online searches result in websites almost as convoluted as this post.
Does anyone have any advice at all for my situation???
Sorry for the long post, I look forward to getting feedback.
Just draw floor plans then, self publish a book, take a few classes to learn the skills you need to do what you want to do. Whatever you do, don't become an architect. Your romantic idea of drawing floor plans will get crushed after 3+ years of school once you get a job and figure out that 95% of what we do is drudgery.
community college or if you have the drive to do it on your own in a non-structured environment infinite skills. In my opinion a certificate isn't going to be all that helpful - those are more geared towards filling seats with rudimentary skills. It sounds like you know the aesthetic you are going for, you could do what you describe in CAD combined with Photoshop or illustrator, Revit also combined with some graphics software...When you say photo realistic plans, that implies rendering - that can be done in any 3d software for modeling then taken to a different software for rendering - sketchup is a good one for beginner modeling, but you would have to export to vray or other software to get the output you would want. sounds like you will need to learn to 3d model and or draw in CAD and render in either 3d software or 2 dimensionally in graphic software.
post a pic of what you like and people here can tell you how its done.
For what it sounds like you want to do, if you feel like you need schooling to learn the ropes (as opposed to self-teaching, which is totally possible just not for all), I'd recommend looking into a drafting program at a local Community College.
If you want to be an architect, there just isn't a way to do it part time. You're looking at close to a decade committment - full time - before you'd be able to work on your own. But it sounds like you're more interested in drawing than "designing"
there are plenty of people in the architecture residential industry with no formal background.
you could get a job at a lumber yard drawing house plans, or you could take a community college drafting class and then start practicing drawing house plans from the magazines in cad, if you want to make the look photo-real, thats another whole can of worms, you can ither drawing by hand on top of your cad plans, or Photoshop/gimp. or you can model them using some kind of modeling software, and to push it further use some kind of third party render and push it even further Photoshop post processing,
whch is what I have done below
Dec 22, 16 3:03 pm ·
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Career Change
I'll try to be brief, but my situation may need some explaining before I can receive quality advice. I'd like to thank all who respond in advance for their help.
When I was growing up, I would buy floor plan magazines and take them home and draw them. I wanted to be an architect when I grew up, I constantly developed my own plans, drew elevations, so on and so forth. During high school, I found a job at an architects office printing. It was the early 2000's and I was able to watch the older guys draw by hand and nI developed a portfolio and applied to schools that had both architecture and Division 1 baseball programs that were interested in me.
To make a long story short I received a scholarship, both academic and athletic to NYIT in Old Westbury, to say I was excited was an understatement. When the coach found out I was planning on studying architecture, he had told me that it was impossible to play baseball and study architecture at the same time; the schedules had too many conflicts.
Another factor was that my family was directly impacted by the terror attacks on 9/11 during my senior year. Old Westbury was not too far from my home, I would have went there had it all worked out. However, I wanted to stay close to home (Staten Island, New York) and the only school offering me a decent scholarship near my home for baseball was Long Island University (which does not have an architecture program, I had never even considered going there). I had a long talk with my parents and decided that I could always draw but would not always be able to play baseball. I'd go there, play for four years during my BA and go back to school afterwards for architecture.
I met my wife at LIU, we have two amazing kids and through my baseball funded education I became a High School Science teacher and baseball coach. I received my masters degree in special education in order to secure my job and further my career as an educator.
I'm thankful for the opportunities I have been granted and everything that came along with the decisions I made concerning my education. However, it eats me up inside that I no longer draw. I find myself drawing floor plans constantly in my free time. I need an outlet to scratch this itch.
To be clear, I love my job. Being an educator is something I plan on doing until I retire. At the same time, I would love to get a certificate/degree in something architecture related to maybe pursue a part-time job.
Ideally, I would love to draw floor plans for a website that sells floor plans (or one of those magazines I used to buy as a kid)during my free time. What would I have to do to get there?
Would a drafting certificate teach me to make photo-realistic floor-plans to submit to these companies?
Do I need a degree in architecture to do this?
Are there career change/accelerated programs available?
Can I do any of these things completely online (being employed with two kids makes going to a campus difficult)?
My BA is in Sociology and Anthropology (don't ask) and my Masters is in Special Education grades 7-12.
I'd love to make myself qualified enough to develop a curriculum to teach an elective in my high school as well.
I don't know where to start or what my best route to take would be. My online searches result in websites almost as convoluted as this post.
Does anyone have any advice at all for my situation???
Sorry for the long post, I look forward to getting feedback.
Thank you all in advance.
Just draw floor plans then, self publish a book, take a few classes to learn the skills you need to do what you want to do. Whatever you do, don't become an architect. Your romantic idea of drawing floor plans will get crushed after 3+ years of school once you get a job and figure out that 95% of what we do is drudgery.
I completely understand what you are saying. My question still remains where do I go to learn the skills required to do so?
Would a drafting certificate be the way to go here?
Would a drafting certificate teach me how to draw photo-realistic plans on AutoCAD?
Thank you for the honest post.
community college or if you have the drive to do it on your own in a non-structured environment infinite skills. In my opinion a certificate isn't going to be all that helpful - those are more geared towards filling seats with rudimentary skills. It sounds like you know the aesthetic you are going for, you could do what you describe in CAD combined with Photoshop or illustrator, Revit also combined with some graphics software...When you say photo realistic plans, that implies rendering - that can be done in any 3d software for modeling then taken to a different software for rendering - sketchup is a good one for beginner modeling, but you would have to export to vray or other software to get the output you would want. sounds like you will need to learn to 3d model and or draw in CAD and render in either 3d software or 2 dimensionally in graphic software.
post a pic of what you like and people here can tell you how its done.
For what it sounds like you want to do, if you feel like you need schooling to learn the ropes (as opposed to self-teaching, which is totally possible just not for all), I'd recommend looking into a drafting program at a local Community College.
If you want to be an architect, there just isn't a way to do it part time. You're looking at close to a decade committment - full time - before you'd be able to work on your own. But it sounds like you're more interested in drawing than "designing"
there are plenty of people in the architecture residential industry with no formal background.
you could get a job at a lumber yard drawing house plans, or you could take a community college drafting class and then start practicing drawing house plans from the magazines in cad, if you want to make the look photo-real, thats another whole can of worms, you can ither drawing by hand on top of your cad plans, or Photoshop/gimp. or you can model them using some kind of modeling software, and to push it further use some kind of third party render and push it even further Photoshop post processing,
whch is what I have done below
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