That's interesting. What programs do you think will be most beneficial for grad school?

Depends on which schools you're going to but I think Rhino is used pretty much everywhere. Sci-Arc is into Maya/Cinema4D IIRC.

CAD stands for computer aided design (CADD stood for computer aided design & drafting). In practice, CAD/CADD is used interchangeable. BIM also is a type of computer aided designing. You are using computers and software to aid designing.... period.... from conceptual to technical drawings for construction. At different stages of the design process, you may use varying types of tools. Typical CAD tools were for drafting oriented. BIM based tools uses a 3d model approach. If you think about it, even Microsoft Paint can be a tool for computer aided designing. The question is, are you designing at a very sketchy conceptual level or are you needing to prepare technical drawings. Most companies that bills themselves out as CAD only is likely to be highly focused on preparing construction documents and work in that later more technical oriented stages of the design process. Some of the tools used are for visualization like fly-by animations and such to 'sell' the design concept by 'wow'ing the client who doesn't know squat and depending on the ethics of the professional can be great design or at the worst end.... total crap polished up in a shiny animation but the design sucks for a lot of reasons. The tools are just what they are. How they are used is important. The original question is whether or not, would you 'intern' at a CAD only firm. Depends on what is meant by 'intern'. For many, 'intern' means slaves working for no money doing everything the company bills for but doesn't get a single penny for the labor.... FREE labor and likely to fall into the realm of illegal labor practice. Who wouldn't be willing to have someone working 2000+ hours a year for $0.00 a year? Someone with any shred of ethics. However, too many just wants volunteers. Sorry, unless it is a legitimate non-profit organization... don't ever volunteer yourself to work for nothing. Get paid. Therefore, make sure it is paid internship where you are paid no less then minimum wage. Ideally, it should be commensurate to the role and duties assigned and responsibility. Short, don't work for free..... PERIOD. If they are paid for the work you do for them, you better be paid for your work and labor.... ALWAYS and on-time without failure without very good legitimate reasons which should be A) rare and seldom, B) never a frequent or regular situation. There is nothing particularly wrong with working for such a firm if they are paying you and you need money to pay the bills and all. However, you may or may not get AXP hours depending on the factors. If you want to become an architect or a building designer then you will need experience in designing not just drafting. You don't want to be pigeon-holed.

Thank you! I wish there were more design built firms. I love construction.

I was just having this conversation with our principal the other day. If you're knowledgeable about construction & detailing it doesn't matter what happens to software long term. There will be a little bit of a lag as they get up to speed with a new program but the real skill is in knowing "what" your drawing, not "how" to draw it. So go with whatever office you'll get the most exposure to CD's with, don't worry about the software.

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Yep.. "Intentional lines" What you use to make those lines isn't nearly as important as knowing what each line represents.

That's interesting. I wonder why. Do they just use cad for modifying existing plans or buildings? I'm assuming they wouldn't do a ground up on cad

my office uses cad all the time on concept stage work where you need a clean plan or section but can't commit the time to build a model. also often on international work where the local industry isn't set up to work with bim models.

That's surprising. Sometimes making a section takes as long as modeling a building and with that you get all plans and sections

Drafting a wall section in CAD is definitively faster and easier than making it in revit if starting from scratch. This is one of my pet-peeves with the junior revit people. The software might "give" you plans and whatnot good enough for a average studio project while in school, but what it spits out is utter garbage unless you have drafting staff competent in construction in the real world with real clients.

Our office is mostly 50/50 between CAD and Revit.  Small jobs still get the CAD treatment while the large stuff goes BIM however, we have no senior staff, other than myself, capable of high-level revit stuff & well experienced in CD/CA... so production quality varies significantly.

I'd agree. I just love revit in terms of construction. I call it the most architecture program compared to rhino and such. My goal is to eventually transition into development/ construction. I grew up in a development/ construction family and its what I truly love. I don't mind reviewing drawings but drawing personally gets boring.

We use CAD & Revit about 50/50 also. We pick the tool that makes the most sense for the scope of the project and level of documentation required. If we are doing CDs for a roof replacement, it doesn't make sense to build it Revit when we have an office library of CAD details for roofing. If we are doing a full building renovation, we use Revit because it is much easier to coordinate information with consultants. We often do presentation drawings in CAD because it is much easier to control the lineweights without taking it into Adobe.

Certain project types just don't need a model either. Unless there's a heavy MEP component, coordination isn't that complicated & making the model is more hassle than it's worth.

People've been saying BIM is the future and CAD (or at least 2D CAD) is on it's way out for as long as I've been in the profession, since before any very usable BIM systems even existed yet. I'll believe it when I see the 3" or 1:5 details actually connected to the model, instead of being the same 2D details I used to draw with a pencil.

We primarily use CAD, however have started a shift to Sketchup Layout; but all of our work are details and repairs to existing structures, so its pointless to build a model, and Revit is not the best tool for clean detailing; unless you do 3d details... which is why Sketchup is gaining traction here because it does it too which is imported to Layout. Primarily the 3d is for those hard to draw 2d details like saddle flashing and break-away showing the proper lapping. Sort of crap I used hand draft in isometric or isometric on CAD since I can now build that interface model and modify it to my hearts desire.

Interesting. I've been hearing many firms use sketchup. Why use sketchup over revit when you have to import it to CAD to get drawings?

Sketchup is significantly less expensive and much easier for for most people to learn.

Levi, everyone and their grandmother can learn sketch-up within about 30mins. It's dirt cheap and ridiculously forgiving. Revit is neither and when a client is paying for your time, they don't want some junior tech wasting 2 and a half days making custom families for a one-off detail when a quick sketchup 3d view can do the job.

Our firm uses Revit for nearly everything. We don't use AutoCAD for anything other than linked civil and landscape drawings. We're a bit of a special case though as we're smaller (ten people) and one of our partners is a 'master' at Revit. As such we don't have the issues of people being 'dumb' with modeling. Even with the the expert level of Revit use we still use sketchup and hand drawings in various stages of the design process. Like anything, Revit is just a tool. The importance is the skill and experience of the person using said tool.

I'm not a tool, you're a tool!

Just want to piggy back on Mightya's comment. I prefer drafting details in Revit over CAD any day. The thing about Revit is you have to have a solid office standard templates and libraries to get the most efficient speed. You don't want to spend hours creating families, parameters, etc. before you even touch the actual CD. Even with Draft view details, I am too used to the drafting with detail component approach. In Revit drafting, the stud is a stud, with preset standard sizes, the sheetrock is a sheetrock you can stretch, with predefined thickness. If you have actual model, you overlay the draft component over it. You do your detail just like how you imagine you will construct it, which component to use first, where it goes. As in Autocad, it is just lines and hatches. You can draw a 3 7/8" stud that does not exist and think your detail works. Of course these are just tools, but I just prefer Revit drafting if you have the library of full drafting components of standard products. The virtual construction using actual product representation for modeling and drafting is just better to me.

Sneaky - You wish you were a tool!

I want to be a hammer!

I want to be an old rusty smoothing plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pey29CLID3I

Design first firms don't generally care about certs, and putting them on your linkedin will get you pursued by production firms with less design cred.

Good point, I've been looking through job adverts and a lot of companies want certified staff, want them to produce .rfa files of their building products!

Stairs have always sucked. Revit takes the basic suck and makes it suck worse.

Stairs might be the only place I'll actually encourage the use of detail lines.

Never had this problem with Pencil.

I love Revit for the things it can do well (i.e. creating a model that accurately cuts section, elevation, and plan views simultaneously, and updates tag information across schedules, etc.). I really really hate Revit for the things that shouldn't be difficult, but are (i.e. stairs & railing modeling / documentation and general population of sectional information that doesn't require massive amounts of detailed structural modeling)

this is what happens when we don't design the way we work

Square - Are you suggesting that architects should be designing the means and methods for construction? Buildings today are far too complicated to reasonably expect that the Architect can single-handedly represent every minutia that happens on a construction site. At the end of the day, my permit and construction sets are extremely detailed diagrams that tell the reader the size, placement, orientation, and aesthetic agenda of components, and then reference them to other sources for specialized details as necessary.

no, my comment was in response to the original absurd diagram. "the way we work" is in reference to revit, not "means and methods of construction," since that is not a part of the architect's responsibilities.

Oh, I definitely understand what you meant now. Yes, the way Revit asks us to design often seems asinine compared to how we actually design. I often wonder if the program was designed strictly by various engineers with no input from architects.

The double edged sword of finally figuring out Revit stairs + railings, feeling like an absolute genius for five minutes, then regretting your mistake when you're "the stair guy" for every project for three whole years.

very happy i was able to avoid stairs for a recent project..

When I joined the firm I currently work with, I was already known as someone who is really good with waterproofing details and stair details. I found one of our interns, trained him to do stair drawings, and immediately started delegating stair design/intent drawings to him. Best decision I ever made in my career thus far.