Custom Residential and Light Commercial Design

"CADD Use in Architectural Firms"
By: James Spinola, AIA, CSI
Design-Build Magazine

CADD is such an integral part of our firm that we sometimes joke that we don’t know how to hold a pencil anymore. While that may be an overstatement, we do realize that today’s CADD software can not be all things to all design firms.

We incorporate Autodesk’s Architectural Desktop for design and production drawings.. McNeel Associates Accurender produces our rendering and animation presentations. Insight’s Squiggle provides the sketch look output we desire during preliminary design. These products along with our in-house programmers, provide a total design/production solution including links to specifications.

As you can see, it takes a multitude of software packages to accomplish the many phases of design. What we sorely missed was a totally integrated package which would seamlessly combine all these design functions. Luckily our in-house programmers have customized the software to the point that it does appear to be one seamless package. In fact, the majority of our revenue is derived from customizing and supporting other CADD firms.

The typical design process involves schematic, single line wall sketching on the computer incorporating bubble diagrams and space adjacency diagrams. These preliminary drawings are output through Squiggle to get that sketchy feel. As the designs are reviewed and further developed, we convert these single line spaces to double line, 3D walls. We try to develop the 3D model as we go to give aided value to our finished designs. As we progress to production drawings, we incorporate our standard detail libraries and keynote systems. These features allow us to quicken the production process by not having to reinvent the wheel. This is one key to CADD, being able to use repetitive objects linked to a specification checklist. As standard details are entered and keynotes applied, a specification checklist is created which we developed in-house. This provides the designer and specification writer with a cross check of all materials used in a design and their appropriate specification sections.

Periodically, throughout the design development, quick 3D renderings are produced to give the client a better spatial idea of the project. The renderings are normally produced on our 11”X17” monochrome inkjet plotter. Final renderings are output on a full size color inkjet plotter.

We have researched several other CADD packages but find our current solution works best for us and our clients. Some of the other CADD packages have bill-of-material modules and stick frame 3D views, but we have found these features to be of more use to contractors who need to do detailed material take-offs.

As for what we would like to see in CADD, it would have been nice to be able to purchase an all-in-one package rather then developing the customized solution we use. However, the customization techniques we have learned have proved very marketable.

As reprinted from Design-Build Magazine.

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