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I’ve been a computer and software guy for a good long time. By that I mean I’ve been using CAD and its variants since the early 1990s when the first AutoCAD computer showed up at my high school. Pre-Windows version – version R10.
I was the kid taking lunch in the teacher’s office running tutorials. It wasn’t too long before I ran out of tutorials and passed them up. By senior year, I was basically running the ‘lab’ in the back of architectural drafting class (3 whole machines), helping other kids learn it.
Fast-forward to now, and as a portion of my world as a designer and a maker – tech has a solid footing about how my mind works thru design solutions. Good or Bad, I think it thru while sketching it and modeling it. As a Revit user – we tend to chase items down the rabbit hole of fixes and end up nowhere close to where we started the day or what we wanted to accomplish.
Swapping platforms that don’t speak the same language creates a huge bottleneck in deliverables. My hope is to shorten those journeys and close the loop on bottlenecks in the design process. Eventually automating the stuff that nobody wants to do while maintaining a high quality of drawing clarity.
I don’t have a relationship with any of the vendors on the list below – but I’m definitely open to establishing some.
I’ve been a Revit user since 2008 while working at MS&R. I was excited for BIM, because I’d already had a few years experience with AutoCAD Architectural Desktop (the AutoDesk competitor pre buy-out). I’m a tech guy. I love knowing how a program functions, and the available ways to push it to work even smarter. Now Revit itself isn’t perfect, no tool really is when you first pick it up. Out of the Box, its powerful but lacking. Its up to the user/firm to fill in the blanks and create their own path toward full benefits. I’ve spent the last 12 years doing that.
Admittedly, I haven’t been on board the Dynamo train as long as I woud’ve hoped. Work interrupted learning momentum, and I’m on the path to developing tools to automate documentation. I’ve built a few dozen graphs, done research and started to pick up momentum with visual scripting and its ability to automate and add additional controls not available in Revit OOTB. I’ve also started down the path to learning and using Forge and I’m looking forward to completely adding this to my tool kit. It’s got some amazing potential, as others ahead of me on this path have already proven. I look forward to engaging discussions.
28 years. I’ve been using AutoCAD for 28 years. Over half my life. From learning how to script from a frenchman named Alain, learning AutoLisp for architectural drafting, building menus & databases since the mid 90s, I’ve been involved in a LOT of tool and process development in that timeframe. Admittedly I haven’t been as active of a user since switching to Revit, but I’ve still got chops if necessary. I used to be able to answer menu questions over the phone without a screen in front of me without thinking twice.
Rhino is an amazing product modeling package. Its applications are amazing to product design. Its expansion with Rhino Inside and Grasshopper are fluid and make it an incredibly powerful creative tool. Once you get a handle on this, there’s nothing you can’t create with it. The last official project that I did with it was the wave-form element at the Mall of America. A double-twisting form that moved up toward a main wave form along its face. At the same time, the entire object flowing along a spline for 300 feet around existing structural elements. Complex geometry made easy, and imported into Revit for final coordination.
In 2010, I had returned to work at MS&R and my friend and mentor Jeff called me over to his desk with a “check this out – you’ll love this” and he proceeded to show me design solutions created with visual programing. The firm had sent select employees for training on it, and I’d missed out. Its been my task ever since that day to make up for the lost education and opportunity to learn this amazing tool. I’m not where I want to be with it, but with the forums and tutorials out there – I’m making up ground. Firms like Gensler are using it for entire building design and analysis. It’s something that I need in my lexicon and to institute. Always learning – but I’m not there yet.
I’ve been utilizing Sketchup for years as a design presentation tool. Its intuitive, and there’s a massive library of resources available. However, I never got used to modeling with it. I would import geometry and apply materials – but all of my modeling was stick-built in AutoCAD. I understand with the plug-ins, and add on rendered like V-Ray that its a great presentation tool, but I had a preference for input and drawing accuracy that earlier versions didn’t really provide. Like I said – its a great front end modeling tool to get started on, but for me – I don’t appreciate staring something with loose design accuracy that needs to be rebuilt entirely in another platform. For my dollar, Rhino is the better place to spend $900 for a seat. got
I’ve also got Twinmotion installed. I’ve played Epic’s video games, and the idea of working within the physics platform to create moving entourage is a really cool marriage of gaming tech and architectural presentations. I’m also a fan of their tutorials for not only Twinmotion, but development using the whole Unreal engine. Something I wish I could get into.
I use this just about every day. This morning started with redoing a couple of icons for this site, and continued to me retooling half the pages in here and editing photos. I’ve used the package for just about every marketing and presentation stack that I’ve produced in the last decade – and my use of adobe products goes all the way back to college. Adobe’s software pricing is also pretty nice considering what you get access to for comparably little investment.
My go-to sketching app. This does most everything that everyone else’s apps do, and you know – for free.
One of the added benefits of using Adobe Cloud is access to the iPad tools. Draw by hand or with all the same tools that the computer is using and seamlessly share across platforms.
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