2002	The 7th Designers 3D CAD Challenge for Architectural CADD Systems 2002 Challenge of the Architectural CADD Cup

Screen Recording Questions and Answers

1
Do I have to work with the camera or screen recorder on all the time ?

Of course not. We understand that much of the time in design is spent just staring at what you have so far, or making experimental temporary changes. We are mainly interested in seeing how you have done fairly significant things.

2

What then do I record, and how much ?

You will probably find that for some of what you record you actually have to "do it again". For instance, suppose you just spent an hour trying to figure out how to do a roof peak with steep dormers surrounded by crenelations. What we ask is, now that you have it, and you have figured out how to do it in your CADD software, take five or ten minutes and do it again with the recorder on. How to do such a thing is valuable information for your colleagues who own the same CADD software, and very enlightening to those considering that software. Additionally, you will even be helping out the people who create that CADD software, as they may see areas where you have to use "work arounds" and know to improve (or add some feature).

3

Are you going to tell us which aspects to record ?

No. We are giving you an extreme amount of lattitude here - of necessity, because the strong points of each software - and your skills - are different in each case. Ideally, we would like to see a little 1 to 4 minite segment on each significant thing in your design.

In the past Design Challenges, one team may have a software that is particularly easy at space planning, so they would show a segment where they finish putting in area zones and then generate the initial walls. Another team used software that allowed them to automatically generate the entire wood frame (something we are not requiring - but if your software does it automatically...) so they showed that.

There are a number of elements in your design that we definitely hope to see :

- how you did the central stair,

- how you did the roof (which could be several segments)

- how you designed the custom door

- how you did any custom light fixtures or furniture

- how you did any fireplaces

- how you did the entrance or internal bridges

- how you did the (hopefully) dramatic entrance

- how you did the elevators and escallators

4

Are they going to show all of these recordings in their entirety at the November presentation ?

No. Our judges will have looked over your design submitted Oct31 and will have recognized the unique aspects of your particular design. Just like jury crit reviews at school, they will ask you to show and talk about only certain parts of your design, within the time limit for each team. (Which, of course will be the 3 hours divided into the number of teams submitting.) The rest of them will be reviewed by the jury and also made available at a nominal cost (of which you get 90%) on the web.

5

Should I show only unusual things ?

Actually, while these things are interesting, remember that many of your colleagues, who may want to buy your "how-to movies" may be interested in more mundane things - how to create that custom door for instance, or, for those evaluating CADD software, even more mundane yet, such as how to designate a specific wall type and plunk it down, cleaning wall intersections, popping in doors/windows, how to take sections and so on. Your design wins prises, your screen recordings earns you money.

6

On that money thing, how does that work ?

Your digital screen recordings will be made available in individual segments on the web for downloading, as well as on CDs in whole sets. While exact prices may change somewhat, ideally we would like to make the individual 4 or 5 minute segments available for $ 2.50 and the entire 50 minute set of each team available for $15. Thus it is much cheaper to get the whole set (assuming someone needs more than five or six of them). In all cases, your share is 90%. The web ecommerce site automatically keeps track of all this, so you can follow the progress yourself.

An architect in a design crunch needing to do a dormer, would be delighted to get your segment for so little, and as a downloadable file. A design firm evaluating three "finalist" CADD options, would be delighted to get three of the CDs for $45 - allowing them to compare, in their own office, how, say, ArchiCAD does sections versus how DataCAD or AutoCAD does them.

The screen recordings you do for the Design Challenge are NOT tutorials (which would require sound and/or slower more methodic step by step screen recordings) which is why the Design Challenge screen recordings sell for about half what our regular tutorial authors get. If you are interested in becoming a tutorial author contact publications@architecturalcadd.com.

7

I have questions on how, technically, to even make these "digital screen recordings" - can you help ?

Please see the two sections on Screenrecordings (which tell a bit of the why) and ScreenRecordingSoftware (which has notes about how you should do it allong with where you can get the required software). If you still need help, we can, even if you need to visit us in Boston, email us first at helpwithscreenrecordings@architecturalcadd.com.