So i began my career as an autocad r14 drafter in the trenches, learned sketchup, photoshop, indesign, illustrator, and artlantis in college. learned vectorworks, when company i was with sign govrn. contract that req'd use of bim but owners didnt want revit, learned gimp do to lack of $$$ to buy photoshop. same concept w/ inkscape & scribus (alternatives to indesign & illustrator) and now i thank god im employed, but i see so many people using or talking about revit and i dont want to get left behind so im learning this in my spare time, but i keep going back and forth on this. by that i mean; at this point in my career, I will be moving more into more of a pm role and will have my lic in under a year so i probably wont be drawing as much so why learn more? is there an end to this madness?
Software in architecture is equivalent to having a tool chest where the tools are always evolving and improving to help create a better architecture. The only limit should be tools that aren't applicable to your design process (Revit would potentially be improving it while learning Grasshopper if you don't do parametric architecture wouldn't be a good investment). For me, being an intern, I think that it helps out tremendously if my bosses understood the programs, even if it's just the basics. When managing people doing the drawings/viz it's good to know the program so that you know the extent of difficulty that you're asking them to do and the most efficient way to do something. I don't expect them to know the program to my extent but knowing the work flow would be fantastic. I get told all the time to photoshop different colors in a SketchUp 2D view instead of just quickly change them in SketchUp and re-saving the view. I don't see Revit/ArchiCAD going away anytime soon so I think it'd be a valuable investment to learn.
You should keep up with software the best you can, and unless your firm promotes quickly being licensed is barely the start of your drafting career, not its end. Anyways I always had much more respect for my bosses who knew the software than those that stopped caring. Anytime you have to ask someone over to do something basic like print or open a view that person is going to think less of you, and age is not an acceptable answer.
Please please please do not loose your interest in learning software. As mentioned above it really really really sucks if your boss is trying to force you to "quickly" change something on presentation plans or diagrams in photoshop because they think it is faster (rather than having the working files in illustrator). Or having a boss who thinks its fine to do all presentation plans, sections, elevations and diagrams in photoshop because they do not know the difference between a raster file vs a vector file.
Or if you are forced to do a very complex 3d model in sketch-up (because boss like the how it looks on screen over rhino) and then you cannot extract hidden line work for elevations sections etc, and need to two other ppl to do that separately. Nor is a sketch-up file any useful when passing the file down to interns to make a physical model with...
Anyways I can give you an extensive list of being forced to use the wrong software because your superior cannot tell the difference. And the result of this huge amounts of time wasted. I was in arch. school for over 6 years (just finished), and every year I learned at least one new software, and I do not think this will be changing now that I am done.
The more different software you know the faster you will be at learning other ones. Also I think Revit is here to stay so if I were a higher up and had limited time to learn something I would invest time on learning that. Grasshopper is getting easier every-time they update it and is not as ubiquitous as Revit.
A good advice I got from a well respected structural engineer... Learn whatever tool, software or technique that will get the job done as efficiently and on time. The end result is what matters. Whether you write the most complex program to automate work or you go the tedious way of manually clicking your mouse a few thousand times, it doesn't matter as long as it gets you to the end result in time.
At the firm I am at, the PM/Office manager/PA knew Revit better than his staff(he teaches Revit) and from this understanding was able to make better decisions than a PM w/o this knowledge - i would learn it and just for that.
autocad r14, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010,2013, artlantis, indesign, illustrator, photoshop, gimp, sribus, inkskape, sketchup, vectorworks, & not including word, excel, & power point, (yes, i have put boards together in power point a time or two), and on the path to learning revit.
imho i dont consider that lazy, infact i was thinking i know a few architects (dinosaurs) that dont even know cadd, and yet are still working hand drafting.
I'm of two minds on this. Obviously some tools are better for some jobs than others, and if you want to do well with highly complex buildings, then keeping up with the software joneses makes some sense. On the other hand, if your work is in residential, then any 2D program is going to take you where you want to go.
As I quickly gain experience and very slowly climb the office hierarchy, I'm drawing less and less, and I'm absolutely glad about that. So long as the design doesn't get perverted by somebody's lack of drafting skill or attention to detail, what does it matter whether it's you or somebody else moving lines around on a screen? I've greatly simplified this, but tools can hinder as much as help, and if your staff is spending 30% of their time learning new software, the work is going to be slower and crappier than if you'd stuck with a less new but tried and tested tool. I don't think it's laziness so much as knowing what you want to get out of the particular tool, then using it well (mastering it, so to speak).
Jun 11, 13 11:35 pm ·
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Is there a limit to the software we should know?
So i began my career as an autocad r14 drafter in the trenches, learned sketchup, photoshop, indesign, illustrator, and artlantis in college. learned vectorworks, when company i was with sign govrn. contract that req'd use of bim but owners didnt want revit, learned gimp do to lack of $$$ to buy photoshop. same concept w/ inkscape & scribus (alternatives to indesign & illustrator) and now i thank god im employed, but i see so many people using or talking about revit and i dont want to get left behind so im learning this in my spare time, but i keep going back and forth on this. by that i mean; at this point in my career, I will be moving more into more of a pm role and will have my lic in under a year so i probably wont be drawing as much so why learn more? is there an end to this madness?
LOL Architects aren't supposed to be machine operators.
Now you have to become a master of excel. Spreadsheets and scheduling...
"Architects aren't supposed to be machine operators"
My thoughts exactly but history has shown us time and time again when you fight change!!!
Software in architecture is equivalent to having a tool chest where the tools are always evolving and improving to help create a better architecture. The only limit should be tools that aren't applicable to your design process (Revit would potentially be improving it while learning Grasshopper if you don't do parametric architecture wouldn't be a good investment). For me, being an intern, I think that it helps out tremendously if my bosses understood the programs, even if it's just the basics. When managing people doing the drawings/viz it's good to know the program so that you know the extent of difficulty that you're asking them to do and the most efficient way to do something. I don't expect them to know the program to my extent but knowing the work flow would be fantastic. I get told all the time to photoshop different colors in a SketchUp 2D view instead of just quickly change them in SketchUp and re-saving the view. I don't see Revit/ArchiCAD going away anytime soon so I think it'd be a valuable investment to learn.
You should keep up with software the best you can, and unless your firm promotes quickly being licensed is barely the start of your drafting career, not its end. Anyways I always had much more respect for my bosses who knew the software than those that stopped caring. Anytime you have to ask someone over to do something basic like print or open a view that person is going to think less of you, and age is not an acceptable answer.
Project managers aren't excluded from drafting and cranking presentation images anyways.
Please please please do not loose your interest in learning software. As mentioned above it really really really sucks if your boss is trying to force you to "quickly" change something on presentation plans or diagrams in photoshop because they think it is faster (rather than having the working files in illustrator). Or having a boss who thinks its fine to do all presentation plans, sections, elevations and diagrams in photoshop because they do not know the difference between a raster file vs a vector file.
Or if you are forced to do a very complex 3d model in sketch-up (because boss like the how it looks on screen over rhino) and then you cannot extract hidden line work for elevations sections etc, and need to two other ppl to do that separately. Nor is a sketch-up file any useful when passing the file down to interns to make a physical model with...
Anyways I can give you an extensive list of being forced to use the wrong software because your superior cannot tell the difference. And the result of this huge amounts of time wasted. I was in arch. school for over 6 years (just finished), and every year I learned at least one new software, and I do not think this will be changing now that I am done.
The more different software you know the faster you will be at learning other ones. Also I think Revit is here to stay so if I were a higher up and had limited time to learn something I would invest time on learning that. Grasshopper is getting easier every-time they update it and is not as ubiquitous as Revit.
A good advice I got from a well respected structural engineer... Learn whatever tool, software or technique that will get the job done as efficiently and on time. The end result is what matters. Whether you write the most complex program to automate work or you go the tedious way of manually clicking your mouse a few thousand times, it doesn't matter as long as it gets you to the end result in time.
At the firm I am at, the PM/Office manager/PA knew Revit better than his staff(he teaches Revit) and from this understanding was able to make better decisions than a PM w/o this knowledge - i would learn it and just for that.
"Why learn more?" sounds like laziness to me. An architect who can't draft (sketch, model, whatever) is like a prostitute who can't #2@#!
LAZINESS!!
autocad r14, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010,2013, artlantis, indesign, illustrator, photoshop, gimp, sribus, inkskape, sketchup, vectorworks, & not including word, excel, & power point, (yes, i have put boards together in power point a time or two), and on the path to learning revit.
imho i dont consider that lazy, infact i was thinking i know a few architects (dinosaurs) that dont even know cadd, and yet are still working hand drafting.
I'm of two minds on this. Obviously some tools are better for some jobs than others, and if you want to do well with highly complex buildings, then keeping up with the software joneses makes some sense. On the other hand, if your work is in residential, then any 2D program is going to take you where you want to go.
As I quickly gain experience and very slowly climb the office hierarchy, I'm drawing less and less, and I'm absolutely glad about that. So long as the design doesn't get perverted by somebody's lack of drafting skill or attention to detail, what does it matter whether it's you or somebody else moving lines around on a screen? I've greatly simplified this, but tools can hinder as much as help, and if your staff is spending 30% of their time learning new software, the work is going to be slower and crappier than if you'd stuck with a less new but tried and tested tool. I don't think it's laziness so much as knowing what you want to get out of the particular tool, then using it well (mastering it, so to speak).
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