Architectural Technologist – Johnathan Pickup – Vectorworks 2012 Tutorial Manuals

Image by Scays via Flickr

I love seeing the Fedex van pull up, especially as I know what was coming, this time it was the set of Johnathan Pickup’s 3D modelling, Architect and Essentials tutorial books for Vectorworks 2012.

I recieved my copy of Vectorworks 2012 a few weeks back and have slowly been implimenting an upgrade to certain projects and setting up templates for any new project, my phylosophy for current projects is not to upgrade unless it warrants the hastle of doing it, even at my simple level of extensions, its a real pain, so unles the new features warrent moving the files I leave alone. I have made a note to go over this upgrading in a future blog.

So here I am looking at the new set of books and wondering which one to review first. Obviousy it has to be Essentials, now I have been using Vectorworks for a long time, but I always force myseld to read this edition, it’s amazing just what I forget, and some of the bad habits you can get into doing it your way, so reading through Jon’s Essentials book is like a refresher course for me, and so often I have had a problem with something, phoned Jon, only to get the “it’s in the manual”, in other words I have skimmed a section thinking I know all this stuff, so first thing, do not skim, read each section, and watch the movie,, oh have I not mentioned this perhaps I should have right at the beginning, all Jon’s manuals come with a CD at the back with the complete book in PDF format, which allows links from the little icons to Jons explanatory videos. I tend to read the book in two ways, partly on the paper edition and partly on the pdf edition, I like the paper book, its spiral bound so lays flat, and it also folds back to I have a small A5 footprint on my desk, and it’s always the first point of reference, when I see the movie icon on anything I’m not sure about I use the pdf version, so I can view the movie, doing something I hate to see in books, but I make pencil notes “great movie “or ”see movie ”

So back to the Essentials manual, this book and indeed the other two, are to good to issue a single blog review, so I plan to split the books into three sections with the last section an interview with Jon, and the first two section being a more detailed review. together with a video report for each section. Although Jon is on the other side of the world and 12 hours in front of me, I plan to do a Skype interview at the end to wrap up each book.

So keep looking, I will issue the first review for Essentials next week, plus for those of you in the UK a route to purchase all the books through my company, together with Vectorworks 2012.

CPD here is obvious, if like me your a Chartered Architectural Technologist, keeping your CAD updated is one of those things you must do, BIM and 3D are increasingly making headway into our lives, so this is a top proiority.

Just reading through Jons book Essentials is going to take at least a day, plus re-reading sections and watching movies this is at least 3 or 4 days, and as I have a business to run it’s going to have to be spread over a week or so, and thats just one book which I usually consider to be the easiest, 3D modelling and Architect are going to take longer.

Getting work in Architecture is hard at present, and competition from other Technologists if fierce, so adding your own review to your CPD records and using that record in your CV is a must. In fact I have just read that Blogging is the next CV, interesting thought and as above, I have made a note to expand on this later on.

The photo today is actually one of Jon renderings and if like me your part of his online lesson then it’s one you might recognise.

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