What CADD Software to Buy

To be brutally honest, giving advice on this topic is what we do for a living, and as experts on the topic, having helped many firms and individuals on this over the past 14 years, we can assure you that which CADD Software to Buy is not a trivial issue or something with a simplistic answer. Elsewhere on this web site you will finds all kinds of helpful information, from ratings and rankings, to reviews, advice, competition results, and statistics. However, you should not buy based solely on statistics, as in doing that you would very possibly miss out on getting software that is uniquely appropriate for your design practice, and, as you can see in the article about CADD statistics, the quoted and advertised statistics are extremely inaccurate and it is impossible to know what the real market shares are anyway.

There are currently some 47 different CADD programs in use by building design professionals today (out of over 200 CADD programs in all categories) and each one is still in business because they have developed a CADD software package uniquely specialized for a particular niche. While there is considerable overlap in the abilities of many of these packages, in general they usually have strengths (i.e. are easier and faster to use) in particular areas, making them more appropriate for one type of firm or individual over another. Firms cad also buy a software that accommodates what they do right now but also will allow them to expand in another area (such as facilities management, rendering, design/build, animation, interior design) because that software also offers those abilities.

The list of factors to consider about each proposed CADD Software is considerable. Certainly the primary functions, the cost, and the stability of the software developer company are paramount, but factors such as the ease of use, available training centers, support, networking ability, the secondary functions (that effect what direction your firm may go in the future), translation abilities with other CADD systems, and the working style approach can all be very important as well.

In the building design industry there is enormous variation in what firms do, how they operate, what their design approach is, and so on. After all, construction is the third largest human endeavor (food, shelter, clothing) so a lot of individuals are involved. CAD has evolved over the past 30 years (yes 30) to accommodate those different jobs - architectural engineering (AE) firms, small architectural design firms, large production architectural firms, design/build firms, sole practitioners, interior designers, landscape architects, urban designers, facilities managers, builders, contractors, self home owner/designers, building engineers (mechanical HVAC, and structural), design schools, and more. Additionally, what we design is an important factor, and can lead to CADD software specialized for things such as kitchens and restaurants, multi-story tower buildings, wood frame houses, industrial complexes, theaters. Yes, with virtually all 2D drafting oriented software you CAN draw all these things just as architects have done line by line for the past 400 years, but certain software will help you create by allowing you to pop in whole building areas and components for specialized areas almost instantly. For instance, a kitchen designer can lay out an entire kitchen with two clicks of a mouse, or a builder can have a program automatically generate a 3D wood frame model all in seconds, and then make minor modifications, which, line by line with a 2D CADD program would have taken weeks - just as it would have by hand. Also, how we design, might be an enormously important factor. Some CADD programs can accommodate incredibly complex building forms (i.e. think of many great architects work) and automatically give you the construction documents (CDs) that would have been extremely difficult to generate in the past, and may even allow the designer to study those complex forms in 3D doing automatic structural analysis, whereas other CADD programs may not have that sophisticated ability but are faster, easier, and more appropriate to another firm that does not design such complex forms. A designer needing to use one of the ancient or current building styles, from Romanesque through colonial and art deco to deconstructivism, can find certain CADD programs more helpful than others, as there are indeed automatic generators for things such as Victorian staircases, eyelid windows, and fancy wood wall paneling.

As an analogy, if someone asked me what was the best car, I might respond, say, the Farrari. However, in speaking with you further it turns out that what you really need to do is to haul logs, or cubscouts, I would say that you don't really want a car at all, but a pickup truck, or, in the latter case, a station wagon or perhaps now an SUV. When people come to me and ask if a generic drafting program such as AutoCAD would work for them, I would respond that such a powerful but generic software is kind of like a utility truck - yes, it will, so-to-speak, haul those logs or cubscouts, but is is really the most appropriate. Other software, like ArchiCAD, ChiefArchitect, or even 3D HomeArchitect, might be like electric golfcarts (to push the analogy further) which are so easy and automatic it is astounding, but, by being so automatic there are assumptions there that make going certain places challenging.

Does this all help, or are you just realizing that picking an appropriate CADD software is not like picking out a music stereo. The real cost of any CADD software is in implementation (office time to set up standards, and training) which can overshadow the supposed "savings" of the initial purchase price of one software over another. For example MiniCAD is one sixth the cost of ArchiCAD, and, while MiniCAD is indeed appropriate for many offices, certain other offices would find that MiniCAD simply doesn't do what they need to do and that in the long run, for their purposes, ArchiCAD is more cost effective.

CADD Categories

Since CAD with one D encompass all possible fields of design - from clothes and furniture design, to the "design" of programs, design of theatrical performances, computer aided engineering, and so on - each with their specialized "CAD" programs, we generally use CADD with double D (second D for "drafting") to designate the category of software used by architects, engineers, and other designers to actually draw or model something physical. The subset of CADD for software specially made for drawing and modeling buildings now referred to as Architectural CADD was at one time (early '80s) confusingly referred to as CAAD with the second A for Architecture.

Architectural CADD encompass several different types of software used for buildings. The principal categories are 2D Production Oriented Software with Architectural Macros (mini-programs), 3D Modeling Software, and Parametrically Intelligent 3D Architectural Design Software. Additionally, because architects make use of them to supplement their primary software, there are other categories such as Digital Imaging (working with photographs and scans of contours) software, Rendering software, Animation (walk through of buildings not cartoon animation) software, building engineering software (lighting analysis, energy analysis, structural analysis), as well as special purpose software such as building frame generation software, facilities management software, and space planning software. A number of CADD products cut across several of these categories, which is wonderful and appropriate for many designers, but confusing to a potential buyer. For instance, one of the best programs in facilities management - Aperture - does have the ability to automatically lay out walls in architectural floorplans, but if a buyer's primary use was simply to draw floorplans there are better options. That Parametric Intelligent software is the category where the most dramatic and exciting development is currently going on, mainly because our level of computer technology finally makes artificial intelligence (AI) in architecture possible. In fact, the new software does seem to herald a paradigm shift in the architectural design profession, as most work is still done as laborious 2D electronic drafting, and the 3D virtual building model approach, not only is a different way of working but requires a higher level architect designer to use it. The competition called the Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems was created specifically to highlight this professional shift and to help architects evaluate software in yet another light.

Strategies to Choose Appropriate CADD

The various resources here on the architectural CADD web site will help you to at least narrow down the possibilities of software appropriate for your firms application. There are links to virtually every company that makes software for building design, as well as to the numerous dealers or value added resellers (VARs) where you can obtain the software. There are even a few that you can download or get free demonstration (demo) versions - though you need to be careful there - I have seen firms pass-by software that they did not realize would be perfect for them because they just stumbled by themselves with demo software. Again to be brutally honest the best thing you can do is to hire an independent consultant who is not a reseller, if you forgive me for being at least a little self serving, who can save you the potentially enormous amount of time you would need to become an expert yourself, or, the alternative, to make too hasty a decision and be paying for an inappropriate CADD system no one likes for years to come. While, yes, we do help people at quite a distance, with clients in several countries, you can frequently find various architectural CADD experts locally. Check with your local university - architectural professors who teach CADD will usually consult outside - and with your local AIA.

One thing NOT to do is what a lot of firms seem to end up doing - having a parade of CAD vendors come into their firm and give presentations. Each one of these presentations is guaranteed to impress your socks off, making it all the more confusing when you have to choose one. This forces the firm, or individuals within the firm, to try to learn and become experts in all these options, and since each dealer will tell you that their software will certainly do all the things you need to do, the end result is usually a buying decision based on some matrix of costs and features. Since the dealers do not (and in many cases cannot, because they are not practicing architects) tell you the implications and other ramifications of using their software as opposed to another (and they tend to be poor information sources about the competitors software) this is all exactly how firms end up with CADD software that never really seems to work the way they hoped, and a few years later (sometimes after a critical project or person has left) they are having meetings to consider switching yet again.

Another thing NOT to do is to simply get what another firm has, assuming it will work just as well. The levels of skill they may have (they rarely can tell you accurately how long it will take YOU to get up to that level) and all that stuff about doing different things in design mentioned above should cue you in to the folly of that. A particularly common mistake is getting what CADD software your engineer uses thinking that will make your job easier. While it may end up making HIS job easier, it is frequently a mistake for the design firm.

In the meantime, have fun, check out the drawings the various Teams were able to do in only three hours at the CADD Design Challenge site, look at the sample drawings on the various CADD software developers web sites. Sometimes the drawings speak a lot louder than anything else.