Why don’t professors teach more AutoCAD in schools?

One problem is that many professors do not know it well enough to teach it. I think that there is also too much emphasis put into some of the feel good stuff like roof top gardens, social justice, and sustainable this or that. All good stuff, but there are only so many hours in the day and you have to master the fundamentals to execute.

I was lucky enough to have a process oriented ACAD class when I was in school in ’94. I thought it was how all ACAD classes were taught. I later learned that many, if not most, are more product oriented. The process approach teaches commands and ways to use the tool. The product approach typically rockets you through a series of commands so that at the end of the semester everyone has drawn some impressive 3d something or other that they can stuff in a portfolio, but not necessarily be able to use what they learned to do anything else.

I learned far more in the first two weeks in a civil/survey office than in two years using it in studio at school, but I did know commands and easily adapted. I’m sure there are some schools with some classes that are doing it well.

I took CAD in college (the engineering school was 3 versions behind, architecture 1 version behind), but I didn’t really learn how to use it until I started working (summer internship).  So many of the commands are hard to understand in abstraction (at least for me).

My program tried throwing in 3D terrain modeling via FormZ, Civil 3D, Maya (shudder), SketchUp, MicroStation, etc until they finally settled on Rhino/AutoCAD – the emphasis was on the software as a design tool (getting bases for renderings, section studies, diagrams) rather than CD work.  A few basic commands were taught, but not much in terms of xrefing, layer management, lisp, plot style management (the rough drawing was almost always tinkered in Illustrator/Photoshop).  I recall there being a huge learning curve for many.

The argument I’ve heard most is cost/time – why would a student spend upwards of $75/hr in a LA program to take CAD when you could take it for far less in CC?  It’s A tool, not THE tool when in school, so it’s hard to have CAD class as a core class – I’ve seen programs offer ‘workshop’ style short courses many for software that seemed to make sense (1hr classes over 3~4 wks).  This way you’re exposed to basics of software packages from which a student can explore.

I assume there’s a good reason why interns are not expected to be profitable in the short term; the only expectation to have would be speed of learning (some folks just seem to pick things up quicker than others, and ‘how computers think/work’ is a rather difficult thing to understand for some).

I’d break down the question like this : once working, do young professionals have a chance to learn all the analytic skills they need to make a good designer ? Do they have a chance to broaden their horizon beyond the office’s practice and have a chance to think/elaborate on other techniques, theories, aspects of the profession ?

Once working, do young professionals have a chance to learn more about the productive side of things : how to become efficient / effective /excellent through the use of tools and organizational techniques ?

Leave to schools the job of teaching what offices won’t, and focus on teaching your staff what skills you need them to master. Then, if CAD skills is what you’re after, hire draftmen.

I graduated from an accredited program three years ago. CAD was not taught by itself. We learned it on the side, during our grading/drainage class. A professor taught us the basics (polylines, pen tables, etc), then we all toughed through a cdoc set on our own. The students who had the advantage were those who had summer internships in design firms, since they could witness office standards and workflow. As bad as it sounds, hardly any students knew how to use xrefs or manage sheet sets by the time they graduated. But boy could they render a plan in Photoshop! 

A few months in my current firm shaped me up quick. I learned how to do things in a quarter of the time that I was doing them in school, thanks to a more experienced designer’s tips and shortcuts.

The problem with “toughing it out” and learning on your own is that people can develop bad habits. I work with civil engineers in my office who are examples of this. Layers are ignored, colors are chosen on whims, hatches, leaders and text become exploded due to time constraints. When younger designers can’t figure something out on a deadline, they go back to their bad drafting habits and it begins affecting entire sets of drawings.

I would have appreciated a bit more CAD training in school, but not so much as to cloud the intent of the classroom. Learning on the job will happen, hopefully it comes from an experienced designer who knows what they are doing. 

To take the landscapeplanner’s original post and flip it around, why should experienced professionals expect entry level designers to be anything but… well, entry level? They will need formal training in just about everything, and that training needs to be budgeted in their first two years. This $#@! ain’t cheap! If the firm refuses to provide formal training, expect laments like landscapeplanner’s above.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending how you look at it, our profession requires apprentice work (internship, whatever you want to call it) in most states. The good part of that is that is the experienced gained. The bad part is that it relies on limited opportunities. Many of those opportunities are to fill voids in production. While there may be a more full experience of the profession once you are in, the key to open many of those doors is going to be in the hands of those who are the more “plug and play” than others.

While an LA degree should be different from a tech school, there still has to be enough of the basics to be functional enough to have the best opportunity to be hired so that we can proceed into the profession. In the early 80’s when I first went to school that meant that if you could not draw well you were screwed. I did not have to like that, but it was reality that I ultimately had to accept. Being exceptional  at graphics was THE huge advantage to getting into an office back then. Much like CAD is the biggest production method and need today, hand graphics were back then. 

It is not that CAD has to be taught in a deep and meaningful manner to each and every person getting an LA degree, but the more opportunity a recent grad has to get into an office the better the chances of moving forward are in the profession. Very few apprentice positions are filled because there is an immediate need for a creative designer. More are filled to maintain or increase production. Gaining production skills IS PART OF a fully rounded education now just as it was 30 years ago. The difference is that production is no longer limited to hand drawing. It is not limited to CAD either, but let’s be realistic – most offices hiring multiple apprentice positions are filling saddles with CAD jockeys and rather than chairs for designers. Then they evolve.

CAD is not a universal ticket, but not having the ability closes a lot those initial apprenticeships right away just like not being able to draw by hand did 30 years ago. You can love that or hate it, but it is reality. If a university is serious about getting all of their students placed in this profession, it has to offer them meaningful training in CAD with an emphasis on land development to the point where the student no longer sees CAD as a separate subject, but just uses it as the tool that it is much like picking up a pencil. You know that it is there, but you don’t think about it. 

Not offering to teach CAD in an in depth way in today’s accredited LA programs is handicapping students. I don’t have a problem if some students don’t want to learn it farther than others, but it needs to be there to give them the opportunity to enter the profession by filling the limited positions being offered …. or they will hire draftsmen from tech schools and there will be fewer opportunities