Best place for a degree in drafting and design?

ScrubBrush

Folks, I am a disable american vet with a GI Bill to pay for my college education. Unfortunately I hate the college I am at and looking for a new one. I would love to hear your opinions on a good online school for a bachelors or higher in drafting and design.

Krisidious

First of all thank you for your service. secondly, I don't know that there is a such a thing as a bachelors of drafting and design, there might be. There are professional degrees in Architecture; Bachelors, Master Degrees and Doctorates. each taking successively more time to complete. None of which will give you a real world, right to do architecture in a commercial setting. For that you will have to intern under licensed architect after your degree for a certain amount of hours and then take a state registration test. Some states allow NCARB registration as a substitute. Some states have grandfather laws that allow you to test out of such requirements.

I don't know what your goal is, Associates Degrees in Drafting and Design are plentiful around the country, however they charge exorbitant amounts of money for a degree that is fairly useless. I know I have one... Mine for instance cost $16,000.00. And no one has ever had the slightest interest in it. I did study for a Bachelors in Architecture but left school before I finished because I didn't have a lot of interest in Commercial structures. Most of the United States does not require you to be a licensed architect to design homes of a reasonable size. Various states limit your work by height, square footage or length of widest span.

To be honest I really believe that a motivated person can teach himself through the internet with relative ease. MIT actually provides their entire Architecture course online for free.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/ Many countless tutorials are available on youtube. Many hundreds of architecture, autocad and various 3D program forums such as this one have a lot to teach and countless professionals to answer any questions you might have. Things to study include but are not limited to, basic drafting skills, architectural theory, structural theory, residential architecture, imperial dimensioning and drafting standards... But like I said it depends on what you want to draft.

Also I might add... This (Housing)is a horrible industry to get in to, I mean really there's not a lot of money. There is for the shrewd business man, but more than not I see struggling artists, myself included... The drafting positions don't pay much and the trade schools are pumping out draftsman. Plus the economy is not helping, We're dealing with a flooded housing market and cheap available housing. People will always need houses, and ever increasingly they'll need high impact housing.

I guess my point is you need to love this work... If you do... You can teach yourself and you should learn to do so because in Architecture you never stop learning.

Welcome to the forum and let me know if there's anything I can help with.

ScrubBrush

first, Krisidious, awesome response.

I am mainly interested in learning to utilize SketchUp and other cad programs. I can create fairly decent beginners level models but I run into a problem where half of the program is useless for me because I can't figure out out what stuff is meant to do. I've designed everything from shipping container houses to gambrel trussed donut shaped houses( looks like the upper half of a toroid, courtyard in the middle), Cargo management truck beds, kayak crates, etc...

All of my stuff lacks the professional finishes. I have never found out how to get a renderer to work with my models, I have no basis to start from. I can't make parts move. etc...

Also I would like to be exposed to the stuff I just haven't even thought of.

I get paid to go to school and I LOVE using SketchUp. so if I can find a decent school for it. I would be very interested.

ScrubBrush

Oh, and mainly I just want to learn how to make the program dance to my tune. Later I will figure out how to make money at it. Learn it, THEN apply it.

tadema

"first, Kristoff, awesome response."

Krisidious

Are you using plugins? there are tons... and a lot of them help you over those walls you run into.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=250026 bang. every thing you could dream of.

as for finishing touches... you're in the right place. come here and read every day. read every post except what goes on in the developers forum. that's gibberish. you might think you're interested in it but man is it deep. bring your scuba gear... otherwise all the other subforums here are great. every day someone will be posting their work and will either volunteer their methods or you can ask them about it.

go here and look into the CatchUp archives. every installment has some really good tutorials that will make you look better.

http://news.sketchucation.com/

there is a construction document thread going here that is really top notch and allows you to see some of the professionals we have and what they provide.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15911

As for rendering we have a section for that too. there are anywhere from 10 to 15 rendering options out there and they range in complexity and price. but someone is using each of them and talking about it in here. Look for the Extensions forum.

But what may interest you more in the post processing forum. they really get into the step by step of getting those professional results.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewforum.php?f=351

Never hesitate to start a thread and ask a question. of course you might search for it, but I'm no forum enforcer I think it helps to have people ask questions in their own way and cover more search term content that way.

SketchUp training... Google was certifying people to train SU. I'm not sure if Trimble is continuing that, and I'm not sure your G.I. Bill would cover it, as it's probably not accredited courses. If there is something in that arena perhaps someone here will know. There are people here in the forum that actually work at SketchUp the company. So we might have to point one of them over here to let us know how the Education front is shaping up.

My advice for joining the drafting industry.
soak up everything you see. in every structure there is knowledge.
get a website going soon and keep it going at all costs.
start building your portfolio now and keep updating and improving it.
force yourself to understand that it will take twice as long to do everything you think you can do in half the time.
get good at asking for money.
only work for free when you have the time and the reward is worth it.
understand that when you undersell yourself and your work you undersell the whole industry.
that being said... compete fiercely.
save all your work in multiple places... backup, autosave and autobackup.
invest in the tools, software and machine you need to do your work efficiently. but do it as cheaply as possible. you can waste hours on a spinning a large model.
pay for advertising at your own peril.
always get the money from a builder up front.
always get a contract from a developer.
Money first... then you work.
remember every day that you love what you do and enjoy the act of doing it.

You probably won't get rich, but in the end you'll have done what made you happy... and isn't that true success?

TIG

ScrubBrush

I will follow your advice. and just maybe, one day I will be able to kick back in my sailboat and earn money doing what I love where I love being. (I already got the boat and the where. just not the money part. lol)

Krisidious

That's actually very possible... The internet allows you to accept whatever currency you want anywhere on earth and to readily communicate with clients. If my mother and sister and her kids weren't here, I'd be there already. In reality those type of places are really cheap to live in. Not Hawaii, but Costa Rica, Jamaica, the Bahamas places like that.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from accredited learning. It does serve it's purpose. And if it's free or even better you get paid to do it. then by all means...

Let's get Bacus over here and see what's up on the SketchUp Education front.

steved

Hi Scrubush. power to you for your passion. Have you considered Industrial Design? from your words and interest spectum, it may be a good fit for you. This forum is full of like-minded people only too willing to assist.