I used to meet an architect friend for breakfast sometimes. There were a few times where he would complain that his ideas for a pleasing design would be dropped when the client realized how much cheaper it was to build a metal building with a facade. Personally, I think that it would have been better to adapt and learn how to make really nice facades, but then again, I’m not the artist.
Another example: an architect neighbor once told me that every stairwell should have an even number of steps; the human body is used to right-left symmetry. I was building a garage and couldn’t fit it in (I couldn’t include any golden triangles either.) Since then, I have realized that most of the stairs I use have an odd number of steps in each flight.
As **Can Handle the Truth ** stated Autocad or Microstation are both good drafting programs with, in my opinion, limited design capabilities. Personally I think they are both too rigid to be good design tools. They are excellent documentation tools of a design, but I personally don’t consider either as a commonly used tool for designing.
Personally I prefer programs such as SketchUp. This is a fairly easy program to learn and is fairly intuitive. You can import a cad floor plan to build from and if I am not mistaken you can get a free copy. I believe Google bought them out and is offering a free version online. Haven’t verified this though.
As a civil, I use Microstation all the time for drafting. However, I almost only see it used on DOT projects; all the architects plans I work with are usually in AutoCAD.
Anyway, tell you kid to start playing with Google SKetch-up like HM recommends. There are free tutorials available to get him started. It’s a really, really impressive free program (when I think about the cheap cut-down CAD things I started with…) and he’ll learn basic CAD skills which will be easy to transfer to the bigger, commercial programs. (or, who knows, Sketch-up is so impressive, maybe it’ll become standard)
I noticed at McGill that the Architecture students have a sort of yearly “drawing camp” where they go off every summer for a week or two and just sketch and draw and behave just like art students! I didn’t go see it, but they have a display every year of the paintings and drawings the students did during the previous camp… last summer they went to Charlottetown, PEI, which, according to my sister who lives there (but I haven’t been out to visit yet), is absolutely, stunningly gorgeous. I think they went to Alberta a couple of years ago.
Is this something a lot of schools do? I think it’s a fantastic idea; whether your interest in architecture is purely aesthetic, or more structural or whatever, reminding students that sometimes there just isn’t any replacement for a pen and paper seems like a good thing. I’m an engineering student, and the first 3 weeks of our Design Graphics course (AutoCAD) was spent just doing free-hand sketches of stuff. That part of the course was inspired by the architecture school’s approach to reminding students about the very basics.
I have a friend who did a year of architecture but he didn’t like it because he was annoyed at the aspects of it that involved counting how many nails to use to frame a room, and solving how many meters of wire you need for the electricity, etc. He really just wanted to do the artistic design (he ended up becoming a physical therapist).
Good luck to your son! 18 is still very young (sometimes I think we push university and careers on kids too young… I’m 26 and just going back for a whole new degree because I didn’t know what I wanted the first time around!) I hope he figures out what he wants and is happy!
