HIGH ON ARCHITECTURE: HOW TO LEARN ANY (ARCHITECTURAL) SOFTWARE IN 24 HRS!

You are one of those people who struggle to work with Computer Aided Design? Embrace yourself to go up and running with any software by following simple steps.

Even though manual work always been cherished among Architects, Artists, and Graphic designers, since the world is changing at a fast pace it’s a good thing to productively use your creative skills with the help of a computer, isn’t it?

First let me introduce you to various software used in the market for various purposes like presentations, 3D modeling, Graphic design, rendering, Visualisations, Parametric design and etc.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe InDesign

Corel Draw

Autodesk AutoCAD

Trimble Sketch Up

3DS.MAX

Revit

VRAY

ArchiCAD

Rhino3D

Grasshopper 

The list is in fact very large. I will come to that part in my upcoming articles.

So you are interested to learn any of the above or all of them, whatever may be your desire all you to need to do is follow these simple steps.

1. Stop procrastinating and get started!

Yeah, you are reading it right and it’s true unless you are that so-called Rational Decision-Maker unlike Instant gratification monkey like me. Start with installing the software first. If you can’t afford to buy a license you can always download a trial version or education licensed version (Don’t use it for commercial purposes). It will force you to start upon something.

2. Start with a specific project.

Instead of starting without any goal, think of a project or try to replicate someone else’s work. It will give you an opportunity to see where you are standing as your learning curve progresses. It also sets a perspective and you will feel confident once you complete it.

3. Understand the UI of the software.

Yeah, as soon as you run the application you may feel discomfort since you have never seen the tools before. So don’t get panicked soon, first try to understand what the software is meant for and learn about various tools, windows, and other options. If you are one of those people who are lazy to watch long tutorials or read manuals then you are in the right place because watching long tutorials is sometimes boring, so try to find documents with shortcut keys or websites with short articles to do a particular project.

4. Try to prepare an algorithm.

Don’t get scared, I am not saying you to prepare some mathematical algorithm using calculus and stuff. What I really meant was that any project is a problem, so to solve any problem you need to follow certain steps to achieve the result. As I said earlier it would be easy if you can find a project that someone already did and if you can follow the same path you will achieve the same result at the same time while doing you will learn so many tools with which you can create a new project on your own.

5. Don’t give up too soon.

Yeah, don’t give up too soon. After fighting for some time with the software you may feel discouraged believe me it happens with most of us. Give yourself some break, once you regain you moral start again.

6. Practice, practice!

As you get too comfortable with the basics you will stop working think that you have learned it. Believe me, you will forget most of the things you did, so practice the same thing with some tweaks to the design so that you will not forget them and do it daily.