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That's because software sucks badly. Architects are used to elegant and simple tools that work all the time: pen, paper and few other things. It's not just CAD

That's because software sucks badly. Architects are used to elegant and simple tools that work all the time: pen, paper and few other things. It's not just CAD software that sucks, it's the interfaces like mouse and keyboard that are slowing down design on computer. And yes, there are other systems but as you say they're not cheap so student architects won't learn on those.

specialist 7y ago
Drafting & design are just hard problems. Starting with the mental models and human cognition. All the way thru workflows, use cases, and artifacts produced. As a kid, I made the transition from drafting boards to CADD. My efforts to mitigate the poor UI, with my own wares, launched my career as a UI designer. Started as an enthusiastic technophile, left a bitter techno skeptic. Just one small example. One research team funded by the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with determining why their mechanical engineers using CADD were no more productive or accurate than when using manual drafting boards. The major finding was that whereas manually drafting had developed effective strategies over the millennia, eg work from left to right (for right handed drafters), CADD software had poor, missing, inconsistent strategies, eg matrix of verbs & nouns showed holes in the UI coverage. To the best of my knowledge, these considerations are still unaddressed. Here's the first hit for that research. It's been forever since I've thought about this stuff, so don't know for certain if anyone built on top of these findings. https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-use-of-cad-an-empirically-inspired-theory-based-course https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-u... FWIW, I was on Bentley Systems' user steering committee for MicroStation at the time. While one of their junior software devs was doing some really cool new stuff, the rest of their hierarchy fully embodied the belligerent arrogance of the willfully ignorant.

specialist 7y ago

Drafting & design are just hard problems. Starting with the mental models and human cognition. All the way thru workflows, use cases, and artifacts produced. As a kid, I made the transition from drafting boards to CADD. My efforts to mitigate the poor UI, with my own wares, launched my career as a UI designer. Started as an enthusiastic technophile, left a bitter techno skeptic. Just one small example. One research team funded by the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with determining why their mechanical engineers using CADD were no more productive or accurate than when using manual drafting boards. The major finding was that whereas manually drafting had developed effective strategies over the millennia, eg work from left to right (for right handed drafters), CADD software had poor, missing, inconsistent strategies, eg matrix of verbs & nouns showed holes in the UI coverage. To the best of my knowledge, these considerations are still unaddressed. Here's the first hit for that research. It's been forever since I've thought about this stuff, so don't know for certain if anyone built on top of these findings. https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-use-of-cad-an-empirically-inspired-theory-based-course https://researchexperts.utmb.edu/en/publications/strategic-u... FWIW, I was on Bentley Systems' user steering committee for MicroStation at the time. While one of their junior software devs was doing some really cool new stuff, the rest of their hierarchy fully embodied the belligerent arrogance of the willfully ignorant.