Computer Aided Design/ CAD?
Another common and widely held misconception is that all the work is done by computers. Computers cannot design for the architect. They are just another tool we use. Just imagine your typical word processing software that you have on your computer. If you started up the program and left it alone for a few hours, days, weeks or years, there would be nothing typed on the screen. No “War and Peace” created by the computer. Nothing gets created until somebody inputs information into the computer. The same applies to computer aided design. Unfortunately the term given to programs that help us draft or layout our designs implies that the computer aids us in the design. That somehow it is helping generate the design. Well, if you turn on a CAD program and left it on the same as you did your word processor, you will end up with the exact same results. Nada, zilch, nothing. We use computers to help us generate drawings, plots on paper, we use it for research and we sometimes model the buildings
