--- back in school with a little more time to expand/refine my CAD skills ---
Question: Is using non-autodesk design tools more or less justified/acceptable now, given the downturn?
On the one hand, I reason that now more than ever, it is time to be expert at max, revit, maybe ecotect & inventor, as a baseline.
The trouble is that were I to need to own these tools for contract work I could not afford my own copies unless I got some pretty large contract jobs. To get the above would be somewhere between $7000 and $20000 + subscriptions
In addition, Autodesk products, in my experience, work well, but not as well or efficiently as advertised (though they seem to have gotten better recently) and so practically, to not waste time, many features go unused much of the time.
Alternatively, for instance, modo+rhino+gh+vectorworks designer will do 80%-90% of what the Autodesk products will do, but for about $4000. More importantly, they do about 99.9% of what actually needs to get done on a regular basis.
However, I wonder if going a non-autodesk route will limit opportunity ultimately because anywhere I've ever worked, it has been important for the firm to be able to say that they are an autocad shop and that there should be no compatibility issues.
Though I wonder if this is changing with the downturn. I saw an article recently about how IMSI's free doublecad has taken off. It suggested that the timing of the product release worked out, given the downturn --why pay $1200-$1400 for AutoCAD LT when doubleCAD gives pretty much all of the functionality for free, or their upgrade package, which is more like full AutoCAD, for only $500 or $600.
Will this same effect manifest in other areas of the CAD/Archviz landscape? It seems rhino is becoming ubiquitous in industry after being popular in schools for years now. What about other conceptual tools that don't cost $3500 and up, such as modo, which is also becoming popular in schools?
One option is to just learn everything -- but this does not seem practical. Or is it? Is this what people are doing? Another option is to just go Autodesk. On the plus side, it might increase opportunities, on the negative side, it might be cost-prohibitive for contract work. Or is it?
I think support, reliability, and compatibility are the main factors that drive firms to fork over the big money to autodesk. Sure there are similar programs out there that can function well for cheap, but autodesk (at least lately) has really stepped it up with the whole customer service thing.
That being said, if you are on your own doing contract work I'm sure you could be a lot more flexible and creative as to how you obtain and use "other" software. The price tag of autodesk may not be worth it to the solo guy.
Since you are in school now, I think you can get most autodesk programs for free for at least a year to try it all out.
It seems a tough problem without a clearly superior answer. It may be better to break it down like this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------MARKETABILITY & MAKING MONEY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MARKET SELF TO FIRM_1: jobs are available and pay reasonably, i target my sector of the industry, learn what they use predominantly (revit & max), cost not a factor b/c i won't have to pay in the near term for these products
MARKET SELF TO FIRM_2: middle case, can be in industry i prefer but only as contract labor, must know software but cannot afford to purchase it unless I earn a sufficiently large contract
SOLE PRACTITIONER: worst case, prepare to be a sole practitioner as best option when jobs are slim and salaries depressed, already having enough years of experience to appreciate what I need out of software, choose most cost-effective tools for job -- if so as a young practitioner with only about 5 years experience, my options for work will be limited to smaller, general types of structures, not requiring the larger packages
------------------------------------------------------------------------------VALUE OF SOFTWARE BASED ON FEATURES/COST
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDUSTRY STANDARD TOOLS: solid tools, probably greatest overall capacity, free to learn in school, though have some unnecessarily cumbersome workflows compared to competition, can bog down a system, software older and probably needs ground-up rewrite, very expensive in a down market
OTHER SOFTWARE: almost all are less resource hungry, several have streamlined workflows and interfaces, several have exceptional customer relations and forums, much better cost/feature ratio for most tasks required in standard practice (assuming high-end archviz is farmed out to specialists), though compatibility issues can be severe, and your lack of use of the STANDARD TOOLS can be used against you by other firms when competing for work
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STRUCTURAL SHIFTS IN INDUSTRY AND SOCIETY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANEMIC PROFIT MARGINS: make OTHER SOFTWARE more acceptable as it delivers all of the functionality ACTUALLY USED most of the time for a fraction of the cost -- rare instances where something more is needed are farmed out
INCREASED COMPETITION LEADS TO FURTHER STRATIFICATION: the gaps in terms of how practice occurs at large AEC/EAC firms versus mid-sized firms versus small practices continues to widen - INDUSTRY STANDARD TOOLS are justifiable at large practices working with large corporate and institutional clients but small and mid-sized firms gravitate more toward cost-effective alternatives, reshaping the market
IPD: leads to BIM as a a minimum requirement, though packages meeting these needs are scaled to industry in terms of complexity and cost
So I suppose the dilemma is, one cannot prepare for all possible contingencies and as it is difficult to say where the work will be in tough times, it is difficult to say how to weight the factors -- each path has pro's and con's -- as well the industry itself seems to be transforming and, to me at least, it is not clear where the opportunity is/will be in the near term (other than overseas)
sketchup is definitely valid -- and i'v been using it for four years for a lot of work, obviously, because it is ubiquitous -- but have always been frustrated by its limitations - and now that i've had to learn rhino and modo, i do feel as though, for about the same money you get worlds more with either of them than you do with sketchup
from my perspective, at a minimum sketchup needs a good render engine - so i added vray
so when you figure sketchup + vray at $1300 versus rhino + vray + grasshopper at $1600, which is what i run now, there is no comparison
of course right now i'm doing this with student copies so it is not that expensive -- but the point is, when i get out again, for picking up work, rhino is like having sketchup plus a full version of autocad for only $800, and with grasshopper, it is like also having a light version of inventor as well -- if i need a professional tool, the latter is the much better value with respect to what can be done with it
Jun 26, 10 11:59 am ·
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? about design tools
--- back in school with a little more time to expand/refine my CAD skills ---
Question: Is using non-autodesk design tools more or less justified/acceptable now, given the downturn?
On the one hand, I reason that now more than ever, it is time to be expert at max, revit, maybe ecotect & inventor, as a baseline.
The trouble is that were I to need to own these tools for contract work I could not afford my own copies unless I got some pretty large contract jobs. To get the above would be somewhere between $7000 and $20000 + subscriptions
In addition, Autodesk products, in my experience, work well, but not as well or efficiently as advertised (though they seem to have gotten better recently) and so practically, to not waste time, many features go unused much of the time.
Alternatively, for instance, modo+rhino+gh+vectorworks designer will do 80%-90% of what the Autodesk products will do, but for about $4000. More importantly, they do about 99.9% of what actually needs to get done on a regular basis.
However, I wonder if going a non-autodesk route will limit opportunity ultimately because anywhere I've ever worked, it has been important for the firm to be able to say that they are an autocad shop and that there should be no compatibility issues.
Though I wonder if this is changing with the downturn. I saw an article recently about how IMSI's free doublecad has taken off. It suggested that the timing of the product release worked out, given the downturn --why pay $1200-$1400 for AutoCAD LT when doubleCAD gives pretty much all of the functionality for free, or their upgrade package, which is more like full AutoCAD, for only $500 or $600.
Will this same effect manifest in other areas of the CAD/Archviz landscape? It seems rhino is becoming ubiquitous in industry after being popular in schools for years now. What about other conceptual tools that don't cost $3500 and up, such as modo, which is also becoming popular in schools?
One option is to just learn everything -- but this does not seem practical. Or is it? Is this what people are doing? Another option is to just go Autodesk. On the plus side, it might increase opportunities, on the negative side, it might be cost-prohibitive for contract work. Or is it?
Thoughts are greatly appreciated.
I think support, reliability, and compatibility are the main factors that drive firms to fork over the big money to autodesk. Sure there are similar programs out there that can function well for cheap, but autodesk (at least lately) has really stepped it up with the whole customer service thing.
That being said, if you are on your own doing contract work I'm sure you could be a lot more flexible and creative as to how you obtain and use "other" software. The price tag of autodesk may not be worth it to the solo guy.
Since you are in school now, I think you can get most autodesk programs for free for at least a year to try it all out.
It seems a tough problem without a clearly superior answer. It may be better to break it down like this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------MARKETABILITY & MAKING MONEY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MARKET SELF TO FIRM_1: jobs are available and pay reasonably, i target my sector of the industry, learn what they use predominantly (revit & max), cost not a factor b/c i won't have to pay in the near term for these products
MARKET SELF TO FIRM_2: middle case, can be in industry i prefer but only as contract labor, must know software but cannot afford to purchase it unless I earn a sufficiently large contract
SOLE PRACTITIONER: worst case, prepare to be a sole practitioner as best option when jobs are slim and salaries depressed, already having enough years of experience to appreciate what I need out of software, choose most cost-effective tools for job -- if so as a young practitioner with only about 5 years experience, my options for work will be limited to smaller, general types of structures, not requiring the larger packages
------------------------------------------------------------------------------VALUE OF SOFTWARE BASED ON FEATURES/COST
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDUSTRY STANDARD TOOLS: solid tools, probably greatest overall capacity, free to learn in school, though have some unnecessarily cumbersome workflows compared to competition, can bog down a system, software older and probably needs ground-up rewrite, very expensive in a down market
OTHER SOFTWARE: almost all are less resource hungry, several have streamlined workflows and interfaces, several have exceptional customer relations and forums, much better cost/feature ratio for most tasks required in standard practice (assuming high-end archviz is farmed out to specialists), though compatibility issues can be severe, and your lack of use of the STANDARD TOOLS can be used against you by other firms when competing for work
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STRUCTURAL SHIFTS IN INDUSTRY AND SOCIETY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANEMIC PROFIT MARGINS: make OTHER SOFTWARE more acceptable as it delivers all of the functionality ACTUALLY USED most of the time for a fraction of the cost -- rare instances where something more is needed are farmed out
INCREASED COMPETITION LEADS TO FURTHER STRATIFICATION: the gaps in terms of how practice occurs at large AEC/EAC firms versus mid-sized firms versus small practices continues to widen - INDUSTRY STANDARD TOOLS are justifiable at large practices working with large corporate and institutional clients but small and mid-sized firms gravitate more toward cost-effective alternatives, reshaping the market
IPD: leads to BIM as a a minimum requirement, though packages meeting these needs are scaled to industry in terms of complexity and cost
So I suppose the dilemma is, one cannot prepare for all possible contingencies and as it is difficult to say where the work will be in tough times, it is difficult to say how to weight the factors -- each path has pro's and con's -- as well the industry itself seems to be transforming and, to me at least, it is not clear where the opportunity is/will be in the near term (other than overseas)
mini table saw
machinist squares
xacto blades
glue
sharpies
scale
trace
basswood
sketchhhuppppppppppppppppppp
I cannot believe how much is being done with it.
sketchup is definitely valid -- and i'v been using it for four years for a lot of work, obviously, because it is ubiquitous -- but have always been frustrated by its limitations - and now that i've had to learn rhino and modo, i do feel as though, for about the same money you get worlds more with either of them than you do with sketchup
from my perspective, at a minimum sketchup needs a good render engine - so i added vray
so when you figure sketchup + vray at $1300 versus rhino + vray + grasshopper at $1600, which is what i run now, there is no comparison
of course right now i'm doing this with student copies so it is not that expensive -- but the point is, when i get out again, for picking up work, rhino is like having sketchup plus a full version of autocad for only $800, and with grasshopper, it is like also having a light version of inventor as well -- if i need a professional tool, the latter is the much better value with respect to what can be done with it
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