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The Pros and Cons of Designing with CAD
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The Pros and Cons of Designing with CAD
Our clients’ needs are what drives a project. Verbal communication is okay as long as everyone remembers, understands and acknowledges the goals. But people can forget. That’s why it’s crucial to translate verbal communication into email messages and send them to everyone involved in the project.To get more news about cad and drafting, you can visit shine news official website.
Having systems in place to help organize information for clients’ plans is also critical. The information should be organized so that the details get into the plans. Contractors don’t care how we gather data, as long as the plans show everything they need. They must have complete information to do their jobs – to transform our creative ideas into reality.
Homeowners also aren’t concerned with what we do to keep everything together, as long as they get the results they want. Even if they’ve learned how to interpret plans, it’s still up to us to explain how each detail we’ve drafted benefits them. They can relate to perspectives, renderings and quick sketches done during a meeting, so knowing how to draw and sketch by hand is an excellent communication tool.The art of drafting has evolved dramatically with the introduction of technology and the internet, and it continues to evolve. That evolution has helped me – and many designers like me – grow and change with the times.
Visualizing Through Hand Drafting
Hand drafting was an objective for me in college. Computer Aided Design (CAD) software wasn’t an option at that time. The interior design department at my college was weak when it came to drafting education, so I took other schools’ courses and hired an architect to mentor me.
Hand drafting my clients’ plans required a minimum of eight hours to complete each page. When clients changed their minds about anything, it involved erasing and re-drawing details. If there were a lot of changes, it meant re-drawing everything. Hand drafting prevented me from working with more than two clients at a time and caused chronic tendonitis to settle into my right thumb. Clearly, it was time for me to learn CAD.
AutoCAD was the biggest fish in the pond, but it was limited to drafting. The user had to create plans, elevations, sections and perspectives.
Within five years after I graduated college,
there were several Building Information Management (BIM) software programs available, which thankfully made it easy to generate all views with the click of the mouse.Computer-Aided Drafting Pros
There are many welcome advantages to working with CAD. For starters, it basically cuts the drafting and plan modification time in half. You can draft a proposed kitchen or master bathroom plan in about three hours. “File save as” allows unlimited iterations quickly!
The software also produces elevations and sections. What you want to see immediately shows up on the screen after you place an elevation or a section marker on the plan, then click the left mouse button. It also generates perspectives. Simply place a virtual camera from a viewpoint, drag and click, and you and your clients can see the view immediately.
Another CAD advantage is that the software creates virtual walk-throughs, which help homeowners envision the results. The first time I used this feature, it helped a stubborn homeowner change his mind. He wanted a shed roof over his kitchen addition but chose a gable roof when he saw the difference.
It builds virtual photographs and motivates client feedback. Homeowners can see to-scale perspectives and give their opinion about how their project looks, which helps more clients and increases income. Less time spent preparing plans and modifications allows you time for more clients, and more clients equals higher income.