Architects and Building Trades Open Source Computer Assisted Design Software By Kerry A. Francis At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Architects and drawing your home, office or even high end cottage. Not so long in the distant past a well equipped professional architect might well have had on hand as part of his craft: a T board square or parallel rules , a couple of plastic drawing triangles , perhaps some templates for drawing circles and the like , door swings and lastly a full container loaded with a collection of mechanical pencils.

Today thanks to the advance of computer technologies and software all of these are off the drawing boards. Computer aided design – CAD – in this case specifically CAD programs specific for architecture and architecture products are the building industry standard tool. Cad produced invariably flawless lines along with simply and absolutely perfect lettering in any font and in any color or color scheme needed.

On top of that computerized drafting and architectural CAD programs have become open source. Open source means that the base computer software code is made available to any software developer to work on. These aficionados can change and add to the software in any manner they wish – modifying, tailoring and improving the software as they wish or desire. It’s as if a million inventive minds are able to work on and update the software as they wish for their own specific purposes. Hence a great amount of tailoring and sophistication to the software can be done. Any changes that are made to the base software programs has to be made available and shared “freely”. Open source programs do not have to be free or no charge. The deal is that they have to be shared – even if it’s a commercial operation that has done the mods to their relatively proprietary efforts. The final product is usually free of charge to the user, although not necessarily. In most cases a donation is requested, for the purposes of the developer covering their costs and allowing for future software development efforts. In this day and age payment for the donation or “beggarware” is often accomplished via Paypal. The point is the tools that might be of prohibitive costs to an architectural firm starting out or even a simple individual wishing to start off or dabble in the field are available at virtually no cost or charge.

For the actual user employing such a Computer Assisted Design CAD program in their projects its all clean, quick and simple. Take for example erasing. Erasing is now done simply and quickly only by tapping the delete or Del key. Its as if the drafting skills of a bygone era that were so seriously drilled into those who trained as architects has been reduced to one simple task that even a relatively untrained technician can do. On top of that the beauty is that final results are quick. Changes can be made in a flash and as well can be shared with others working on the project – whether it be for a simple home or giant office complex. These changes can be shared in a snap instant regardless of whether the other building professionals are next door or half way around the world up there in the Canadian north. The speed of changes or any improvements to any building projects is thus quick and enhanced. It used to be the practical logistics of actually sitting on people’s desks, being forwarded and then mail delivery was a major limiting factor – stretching out the practical length of time that any changes could be made in. Not now with CAD and computer aided drafting techniques being used in the industry any changes made are accomplished in one single snap of time.

In the end these sophisticated yet readily available computer software programs have allowed for the simple timely advance and advances in the architectural fields and building trades.

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