sorry for long blurb in images purchansed thread
AUTOCAD / REVIT users here:-
I like how we come creeping out of the woodwork when anyone mentions software
My choice to learn revit is with the aim of finding another job - the place I'm at now is never going to make the transition
My machine is an i5 16gb ram and a 3gb amd7950 gfx card with an ssd, so it should handle revit for learning stuff at home.
Funny how most people I know with any kind of CAD experience are generally self taught the basics to get their foot in the door. I know I started off just messing about doing stuff at home - I landed my first trainee cad job about the same time I enrolled on a C&G course - 2d/3d/3d wire frame at my local college, couple of nights a week for ~ 2 1/5 years maybe?
I found that the self taught stuff was a head start, but being taught the proper way to do cad gave me a more in depth understanding of how to draft with the software. Add the potential of LISP coding in full autocad which was very much a trial and error experience and I found I knew more about the nuts and bolts of the software than most of my contemporaries at work.
Having said that, over the years I've not had the luxury of being able to specialise in a specific area of cad design - I started with refrigeration fit outs for national supermarket chains (tesco, safeway/morrisons, marks & spencer, dunnes stores, co-op etc) redundancy led to fire alarm installation and panel design and assignment, followed by some bespoke mechanical lift manufacturing, and finally I work as 'the only cad guy in the office' for an electrical subcontractor - we do office fittouts; electrical design, bus bar installation, data networks, fire alarm detection and security fitouts and lighting design using Relux - *shudders*
Most recently the jobs have been for county councils and university refurbs.
Some interesting stuff, but with some really frustrating deadlines. But that's what you get being at a smallish company.
I've seen the potential power of revit in various youtube tutorials, and the increasing incidence of the architects we work with using revit and not autocad, plus I've heard that government contracts (and probably local government/council too) will be stating revit use as part of standards compliance in the next few years.
All in all, I'm quite looking forward to learning something new; If I stay where I am, in 5 years time I'll be the wrong side of 40, still using autoCAD LT, knocking off the same fitouts and details with the same limited resources and information - a prospect I find a lot scarier that Revit's lack of crosshairs or commandline!