When I was in school, a long time before computer aided drafting, one of the most frustrating discoveries was how many want to be designers couldn’t visualize in three dimensions. Beyond perspective, everything has weight, volume and other atributes that makes it a 3D object, rather than just lines on the paper. For many if the lines joined, it must just work. Any serious designer knows that it isn’t so.
In the late eighties/early nineties when I first started drawing in AutoCAD I found that there were set geometric rules to make the designer use logic and formula to draw, rather than “just faking it in.” Even then, you really could just make it work. After all, it was just lines on paper to graphically represent a building, a site or another object. Then nobody used CAD for rendering. Renderings were still done by hand. Many times in conte crayon, much like an artist would. As color pencils were discovered in the architectural world, many started using pencil and later even watercolor. It was then that the architect seperated themselves from the artist. Nowdays architects rarely render. It’s generally hired out to companies specializing in architectural rendering or modeling. Even those using Revit or other modeling software. The advent of Sketchup has changed this somewhat.
Many of the models I walk through today still have layers of elements that have been added just to make the paper space graphics work. Though it takes time (not so much) to put together the elements of various structural and none structural walls, I have to consider how much time it took when I first started when Ketiv was the only 3D drawing program. Revit was first introduced in version 1 in 2000. Now twelve years later we are still seeing too many “standard 6″ walls” used in structures. In fact the finite designers of MEP and structural have surpassed the architects in many ways. Simply because their product is unique and has uniques atributes in every instance. I will say that for the most part, they were forced in to the world of 3D.
I don’t know about you but I kind of find it fun pushing the software because I always think about what it’s going to look like in 3D or rendered, not what it’s going to look like as a paper sheet.
It’s difficult finding the time but have fun with your designs. The image here was drawn in CAD with the intent that it could be projected on to sets for the set painters to follow. Even though design software speaks of sketching, how many of you really do? For that matter, how many of you actually carry a sketchbook anymore for those ideas that fly by.
