Interior Design Student - Which CAD software to study / purchase

[jonoavnon350444]

Hi - bear with me if this has already been discussed, could not find any specific answers in older discussions.

Interior Design student - need to choose between REVIT, VectorWorks and AutoCad (essentials, 2D and 3D) to specialize in.

Which would be the most useful for someone wanting to open up a private ID pratcise specializing more in Residential Design and Decorating.

Any advice on which specific CAD courses are more suited to Interior Designers / Decorators would be greatly appreciated -- I have no previous experience in any of them.

Thanks!

[Norton_cad]

I'd recommend either Autocad Lt or Google Sketchup for a complete newbie. If later you need to go to the vertical programs like AEC, or Revit, at least you can import easily *.dwg format data.

[jonoavnon350444]

Thanks Mark.

I cant help feeling that AutoCad / SketchUp are aimed very much at Architects and less for Interior Design - understandably the two go hand in hand. While I realize the technical / drafting element will make up a large portion, my primary interest is in light residential / commercial interiors and ideally Id like to be working with existing plans and be focusing on creating amazing interior spaces with great furniture / finishes / fixtures etc.

I've been having a look at Chief Architect Interiors and it looks a lot more user friendly / interior design orientated.

[Norton_cad]

Chief architect, and Pro cad, do produce the documentation as claimed, but take ages to learn, and arn't well supported as autodesk and google. The furniture librarys are extensive for all, but in autocad is easy to create from scratch any non standard types. The materials and renders are similar too. If your an interior designer, you will need acurate schedules for an FF&E package. You can create tables to do this in autocad, and in none of the others. The AEC vertical of Autocad, even have this all set up for you, with furniture available too.

[irneb]

You can create tables to do this in autocad, and in none of the others.

Untrue! Revit's scheduling is miles ahead of ACad's Data Extraction. Perhaps you're referring to AutoCAD Architecture's (ACA) Scheduling, that's closer to Revit's - though still not as capable.

AFAIK it depends on what you're after. I've seen ID companies doing large scale designs (both 2d & 3d) using ACad Vanilla. Then also I've seen residential ID being done through Revit. I'd say those are the 2 major extremes. Though IMO I'd lean towards Revit (or at least ACA), simply because it's easier to get to 3d renderings and accurate schedules. There are also quite a number of furniture families available for Revit, and not impossible to make our own, or even just import direct from ACad. Though one thing is that some shapes are difficult to model direct in Revit, usually I'd then model them in ACad and import into Revit.

And if you go with one of the suites from ADesk you get Revit + ACad anyway. So why not learn both - allowing you to use the "best"/easiest/fastest tool for each job/portion of a job? You need not learn all that there is, know as much as possible from the one you use most, then just concentrate on the aspects you find useful in the other. E.g. I'd learn Revit to near Expert level, but concentrate on ACad's 3d modelling instead of going though all its annotative / 2d stuff.

[Norton_cad]

None of the others, except Revit. Revit does it all, but is allot more expensive, then Acad lt.

[irneb]

None of the others, except Revit. Revit does it all, but is allot more expensive, then Acad lt.

Definitely! And if you're going for LT, then I'd suggest looking at the even cheaper BricsCAD instead, seeing as it's closer to the full Vanilla ACad, not to mention has decent 3d capabilities as opposed to LT's near non-existent 3d. Especially since the OP's mentioned this:

... private ID pratcise specializing more in Residential Design and Decorating.

So I'm guessing 3d rendered views of rooms would be something which happens quite often.

[cadtag]

Starting a private practice suggests that initial and ongoing costs will be a factor. While the Revit package is the best option for BIM, BricsCAD is financially speaking a much better choice fior the initial software package. Sketchup has the advantage of a huge library of user-developed content and seems to be a popular choice. Autodesk's Revit, Architecture, and Acad applications have the better user support community (e.g. AUGI and some other forums)

Autodesk products have the disadvantage of high initial license costs, very high ongoing subscription costs (or punitive upgrade costs intended to push the subswcription model), and their current push to put all their development onto the cloud is very problematic.

YMMV, but BricsCAD plus Sketchup are a viable combination to work with, and much more affordable than the 'big guns'. Heck, if your drafting requirements are for 2d, you can go with Draftsight, which is 95% equivalent to Acad LT funtionally, but free to use for commercial use.

[irneb]

True, and the nice thing is that 90% of what you learn in BC can be applied to ACad if you later switch. Not to mention, there are already some addons available for BC, e.g.: https://www.bricsys.com/common/appli...ionCategory=14

An as far as I'm concerned, the major reason ACad became so prevalent was because it was so customizable when other "better" cads were one-size-fits-all.

[jaberwok]

An as far as I'm concerned, the major reason ACad became so prevalent was because it was so customizable when other "better" cads were one-size-fits-all.

that, and the fact that it was so widely pirated in the early days because the north american consumer supposedly would not tolerate hardware security devices. £0.02