What software do you use? (CAD/BIM)

Hi everyone!

As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, over the last couple of decades CAD and BIM software like AutoCAD and Revit have steadily all but taken over a lot of the fundamental areas in architectural planning.

With that in mind, I'm going to take advantage of the very international community we have here and ask a question that has come up quite often recently:

What software solution do you use predominantly at your firm, or at your school?

Or perhaps more to the point, what, if any, software is used most often as a "standard" in your country?

Here are a few of the popular ones, just off the top of my head:

Vectorworks, All Plan

The AutoCAD family, Revit

Archicad

Bently Architecture

I'm also very curious if anyone still uses an orthodox all-paper approach, and whether it's still viable these days.

Lastly, how many of you out there routinely use Sketchup for the early stages of planning?

The reason I ask is that many of us at my school here in Tokyo are a little confused as to what tools are commonly used outside of Japan. Even here teachers can't seem to agree on whether Vectorworks or AutoCAD is dominant locally.

Looking forward to your inputs!

Tags: archicad, autocad, bim, cad, revit, sketchup, vectorworks

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Permalink Reply by Murat Öner on June 12, 2010 at 1:06am

C4d for sketch, conceptual modeling. Acad for 2d drafts. Pshop for compositing.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Viruvelil on June 12, 2010 at 9:15am

We use AutoCAD for drafting.No paper sketches any more even for initial planning as Auto CAd allows easier corrections and changes
For three D pictures #D max is also used

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Permalink Reply by Mayengbam Ranjit Luwang on June 12, 2010 at 10:00pm

We are presently using AutoCAD but trying to migrate to Revit in 2-3 months time.

I m just curious, how much is ArchiCAD different and superior in comparison with Revit. I thought Revit was better as its provides linkage to 3D max for rendering.

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Permalink Reply by Yin Lung Lee on June 17, 2010 at 10:15am

From my experience, I wouldn't say ArchiCAD is necessarily superior, although the philosophy/approach of both programs are very different. As of 2010/2011, the improvements to Revit's conceptual mass makes it a clear winner in my eyes, but there are many people much more experienced than myself who swear by ArchiCAD.

But as I said, I still don't see either being superior to the other overall, it just depends on your personal preferences and what you put your priorities in;
Revit's FBX tie-in to 3ds Max is definitely a bonus as far as presentation quality rendering is concerned because the shared material library saves time. Even with just the recent Revit internal mental ray engine, you can achieve very usable results (although with fairly spartan options for optimising scenes etc.).

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Permalink Reply by Markele Mc on July 2, 2010 at 5:46pm

Hi Yin Im an architecture estudent n central america I think paper sketch is the most important way to get ideas and Autocad ior Revit are just some tools to preset these ideas.Thats the way ,we use at school and its pretty good.

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Permalink Reply by hizam on July 4, 2010 at 3:56pm

ya i agree with that. as u know, i use revit n autocad also for produce my technical drawing..n i'm still doing sketch until now for first step. software its only such a tool to help n make it easy, but still i can't leave my hand sketch.

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Permalink Reply by Tyson on July 7, 2010 at 12:32pm

I use Rhino for Modeling, 3DS Max for Animation, Photoshop for finish rendering, Illustrator to make drawings and diagrams, and construction documents with Revit. Although I must admit that pen sketching is the most conceptually useful.

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Permalink Reply by matthew westley on July 7, 2010 at 1:21pm

tyson, do u know how to do a render with just the lines on rhino? ( heard there is an option ) - useful instead of drawing on cad.

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Permalink Reply by Tyson on July 7, 2010 at 1:43pm

Matthew, you wouldn't render the lines, instead I would use the make2d command. Basically it gives you all the lines in a particular view and puts them separately on the grid. You can then export them to illustrator or whichever program you do your drawings in. Let me know if that helps. Make sure to select all the objects you want the lines to be drawn from before you input the command.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Dusek on July 8, 2010 at 2:21am

We have a small practice in north-west London dealing primarily in private residential homes of a 'traditional' style. We hand draw our initial planning proposals, and following clients comments, we begin drafting them using Caddie 15. Working drawings are also drafted using this software. Caddie 15 is very similar to Autocad 2010, but has significantly fewer users in the UK.
Sketch Up is used to create 3D models for client interaction and final proposal images.

Hope this helps! Good luck with research.