How the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) has changed architecture?

-Practicing architecture without computer is now unimaginable. From ancient time to

1960s of practicing architecture, the architects and the designer were used pen, paper,
tracing, pencil etc. Most difficult drawings were also done by hand drawing, scale and
pen, pencil. Day by day architects and architectural works grows vastly. So, offices
hired many people who draws the working drawing for the architects. Mostly those
people had no knowledge of architecture. Those workers only followed the instruction of
the lead architect. Huge size Drafting table, Triangular scale for measurement, Set
square, Compass, Divider were used for the drawing purpose. One single building
working drawing took many hours and days to draw back then and done by many
employees. Those who only draws with the instruction of the lead architect, they called
Draftsman. That time draftsman demand was very high, and the salary was also
impressive. But as all the drawing done by the man and it was not so easy tusk and
time consuming, so working on different projects at a time was not possible at that time.

In 21st century we use CAD for architectural drawing. It makes our works easy and we
can do those work at a short time that were not possible at the time when only
draftsman draws all the drawing manually.

In 1970s the engineers started the use of CAD for many different types of designs, such
as mechanical, electrical appliances design etc. At first CAD was designed for
engineers not for architects. SOM (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) was the first
architectural company who took the initiative to buy a mainframe computer to use CAD
for structural and architectural design. It was a risky step for the company, when new
technologies just starting to form. Fazlur Rahman Khan lobbied the SOM partners to
use CAD for design. He also took the initiative to purchase the mainframe computer. It
was the starting of Computer Aided Design for architecture.

By the uses of CAD, the profession called draftsman is no more now a days. All the
architects and engineers now a days knows Different types of CAD software. The team
of architects do their own drawings by their own. It easy to use, time saving, and extra
cost of draftsman also eliminated.

It also changed the architectural design method and visualization. There are many
software to works with such as Autocad, Rhino, Archicad, Revit, Lumion, Twinmotion
etc.
Autocad: This software is vastly used architectural design all over the world. We can
draw plan, section, elevation using this software. Curve drawing, Parabolic design is so
easy to draw. This type of drawing was so difficult back then when there was no such
type of software. It eliminates our time of drawing. One single designer can do different
types of drawing at a time if short time and save them to later references. There are
many software like autocad such as DraftSight, BricksCad, LibreCad.

Rhino: Rhino brings revolutionary change to the architectural works. It was first made
for product designing. But it is now used for architectural design too. By using Rhino
architects can design parametric form that was never thought by anyone before the
CAD Software like Rhino came out. By using a plugin called Grasshopper makes the
parametric design to a new dimension. It not only helps to make plan or 3D model of the
design but also helps for the making of the structure. There is many software like Rhino
such as Blender, Sketchup, Maya, Cinema4D, 3dsMax, Modo, Gmsh.

Archicad, Revit: This type of software called BIM (Building Information Modeling)
software. These software helps make 3d by its own just drawing the Plan. It makes all
the detail plan, Section, Elevation how it is commanded to do. By using this software all
the detail drawing can be made by drawing plan. All the building making information will
be provided by this software.

VRAY, Lumion, Twinmotion: At early period architects made detail drawing with color
and draws perspective of the building to see how it would be looked like. But at this time
architects make a 3D detail drawing by using Rhino or Archicad or Sketchup or any
other software and render a Image with Vray or Lumion or Twinmotion to see how the
building will look like. It gives us the real nearly real image view. And also eliminate the
time of model making and drawing many perspective.