Yeah, I heard microstation was mostly favored by transportation engr.</p>
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But the 2010 version has 2D AND 3D!!! Or do you mean that its 3D features are lacking compared to the other 3D software out there?</p>
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Interesting. And I suppose that also means (for better or worse) that a single draft has more hands working on it, and drafts are shared with more back-and-forth, each guy working on his own specialty, and eventually they come together nicely? You listed a bunch of different fields there…</p>
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Yeah, sap2000 is used by our steel bridge team.</p>
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That right there sounds awesome. I love programming–it would be cool to integrate it with cad.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that’s my battle plan. Although I’d personally favor sap2000 over ETABS just because it’s the one used here (ucla).</p>
<p>Until recently, I was actually most interested in wastewater/hydrology/enviro, but now structural and geotech are also looking pretty cool. Anyway, I’ve got time.</p>
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Aibarr, thanks for the tips!-that helped a lot. And I agree–depth beats breadth!</p>
<p>This thread has been very useful for me as well.</p>
<p>I have always been under the impression that AutoCAD’s (painful) use is dwindling in favor of Revit, which appears so much more practical and what all the fresh grads are getting into. Can it not do all the things AutoCAD does, at least for Civil Engineers? </p>
<p>As a construction management focus, I feel that I wouldn’t be doing too much designing but still want to do a little. My intern friend in Civil says she is asked to make parts on AutoCAD and send it in for them. However, I have not been asked to do any (only the architecure dept). So should I be worried that I’m practically going into the job market with 4-years-ago knowledge of AutoCAD, or should I just ignore it and learn Revit?</p>
<p>No, it’s just that it doesn’t have specific functionality tailored to the engineers that use those other 3D software programs. Revit has things specific to cutting beam sections, for example. As another example, recently, we worked with a surveyor who only had access to CAD 3D, not Civil 3D. In Civil 3D, you can assemble pipe networks and calculate flowlines and volumes from that, and assemble plan-and-profiles… It’s pretty cool. The 3D base model that the surveyor had done in CAD 3D, though… It was just a network of underground cylinders. So we could tell where all the pipes were, and they were technically in 3D, but it wasn’t particularly useful to us because we couldn’t do any actual design work with it. BIM platforms like Revit and Civil 3D allow some design interactivity because the drafted attributes are linked to design information, not just spatial orientation.</p>
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<p>Oh, man, it’s a total fustercluck. </p>
<p>Sorry to use fake cursing, but it’s really the only thing that comes close to describing what happens when you get that many people adding ingredients to the stockpot.</p>
<p>Even within a single office, you’ve got a bunch of people drafting within the same files. It’s a whole different level of obnoxiousness trying to coordinate something like that, and making sure that everyone’s using the right version… That’s something you really don’t have to deal with when you’re a student… Drafting coordination. It’s a mess and a half.</p>
<p>Then when you take EVERYONE’S model and bring it all together… It’s three kinds of mess. Usually, someone’s separately contracted to take everyone’s Revit and Civil3D and CAD 3D models and put them together. We often do it, because we have madd crazy capabilities where BIM is concerned, and we coordinate models all the time. We’ll charge a fair percentage of our original fee in order to do that… It’s no simple task.</p>
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<p>Not really integrated with CAD… it’s more of a standalone program. But programming is a useful skill to have. Keep it on your resume and remind your higher-ups that you can help with R&D tools.</p>
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<p>SAP2000 and ETABS are both produced by CSI so if you know one, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of the other.</p>
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<p>Revit has a very lofty goal. It aims to produce a model AND produce drawings from that model.</p>
<p>I didn’t have a very good understanding of it before I got into practice, but the art of producing construction drawings is fairly complicated. AutoCAD caters to that goal-- producing drawings. In a traditional, non-BIM world, everything is first designed and then cut into intelligible slices by the engineer, given to the CAD technician to draw, and then the building is constructed from those slices. Within those slices, there are cut sections, detail bubbles, notes… Lots of little bits and pieces that need to be conveyed via the drawings to the contractor.</p>
<p>In the BIM world, instead of having the engineer design and cut sections, the engineer works very closely with the drafter to develop a fully-detailed three-dimensional structural model. Then, the sections are cut-- not in the engineer’s mind, but by the drafter and the computer… Neither of which know very much about design of buildings, since that’s the engineer’s job. The sections are cut with the guidance of the engineer, but it’s a completely different way of thinking when it comes to structural design and presentation of those designs.</p>
<p>So instead of Revit being this magic bullet that is the wave of the future and that’ll solve all our problems, we really need to see it as a shift in the fundamental design presentation philosophy of the industry… We now do two processes at the same time, which we used to address separately. Now we have to design-multitask and produce two sets of workable documents-- the 3D ones in digital format, and the 2D ones that are the design documents. That makes it a little scarier, and that’ll give you a healthier respect for how cautious we need to be as we proceed further into the world of BIM.</p>
<p>Revit will always be intrinsically linked to CAD. We will always need to put together models with the understanding that eventually, we will need to convey the information that they hold in a two-dimensional format… At least, for the foreseeable future. Revit is still an Autodesk product, and it’s still VERY similar to CAD. In fact, most of the work done will LOOK like CAD work.</p>
<p>So with regard to your question, now that you’ve got all that fundamental information-- Can’t Revit do all the things that CAD can do?-- Yes it can, but in order to use Revit in a responsible way, you really need to understand how CAD works, because you’ll always be coming back to the part where you need to convey everything two-dimensionally. You can always learn a 3D platform later after you learn CAD, with not too much trouble. It’s very difficult, however, to go back and learn the fundamental thinking of how to slice something to show off its design, such that it can be built by another person. That’s the part that CAD or even conventional drafting will teach you.</p>
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<p>And now you can answer this question. :)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about just going into industry having old CAD knowledge. I did the same thing a few years ago and I’m fine. You just need to know (and continue to develop these skills, because you don’t know everything about it yet) that you have to convey your ideas on paper eventually, and learn to use CAD to convey those ideas.</p>
<p>It’s all p-lines and layers and sheets, no matter which platform you turn to. You’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Yes I do. I’m sure they have their reasons for not teaching drafting principles, but I can’t figure it out for the life of me. All the design and analysis that engineers do is useless if they can’t communicate information to others to build it. And that’s what drafting is for… to create drawings to tell someone else how to build it. It’s a form of communication. </p>
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CAD will always be CAD and the basics won’t change. The menus might be a little different and the commands may change slightly, but it’s nothing you can’t figure out with F1.</p>
I see. BIM is starting to sound cooler than plain CAD. I know I’ve just started with CAD, but sometimes I don’t exactly like how “artsy” it is. I’m in engineering, right?</p>
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right… </p>
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makes sense. sounds like a much better scheme</p>
<p>Though I must say that your description makes it sound like working on CAD on my own is not exactly adequate preparation. But of course, everything’s teamwork and passed between multiple hands/claws.</p>
<p>Like Ken says… If you can’t convey your ideas effectively, then you might as well keep them in your head, because they’re not worth a darn.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s artsy, in a sense. It’s only artsy in that you must convey your designs in a visual medium, though. There’s a certain art to understanding how to cut these sections and draw your ideas, but as you continue in your engineering studies, you’ll find that that sense of visualization fits in well with how you have to think as an engineer. It’s all integral.</p>
<p>Might behoove you to take a drawing course. I know that learning to draw really helped me. It was a little touchy-feely frou-frou, yes, but having to really look at a thing and understand it in three dimensions-- that’s the essence of engineering. The math behind it is to justify your sense of design.</p>