Throughout my career, I have used many different programs to accomplish this thing we call Interior Design. In fact, I use so many programs in the course of my regular day-to-day job that I’ve even got an entire section of my resume dedicated to just software proficiencies. What can I say? I’ve always been a bit of a tech nerd. Professionally, I’ve worked in AutoCAD, ArchiCAD, Revit, Sketchup, Enscape, Lumion, Twinmotion, and a variety of other graphics, database, and office programs. Among this wealth of technology, AutoCAD has reigned supreme as the most common choice for Interior Design.

In my many years across all these platforms at multiple firms working on many diverse types of projects, I have come to believe that the field of Interior Design has consistently lagged behind other related fields in the AEC industry. The way that many firms communicate and explore interior design has become outdated, and its long past time for the profession to acknowledge that tools that work "good enough" are getting in the way of progress and growth.

Here's some perspective for you:

The first version of AutoCAD was released 40 years ago.

The first version of Revit was released 25 years ago.

This means that the average student graduating from college with a Bachelor’s degree today is younger than Revit, and 16 years younger than AutoCAD. My point is that BIM technology IS NOT NEW. Can you imagine what things would look like if we were using the same cell phones today that were invented 25 years ago? Move aside iPhone. Let’s all go back to a Nokia 3310! Insert eye roll.

So, let’s talk about AutoCAD and four reasons why Interior Designers should ditch it.

1 – AutoCAD doesn’t work for communicating with owners and future occupants. AutoCAD is best at 2D line drawings. The problem? Most people can’t really read 2D line drawings, much less visualize what those drawings are telling them. Spatial visualization skills are uncommon and often neglected by general education. The end result is often a confused owner looking at the finished project and saying, “I thought it would be different than that.”

2 – AutoCAD slows down communication with architects and engineers. Architecture has become fully entrenched in interconnective technology. Each profession typically creates its own model, then loads everyone else’s models into theirs so they can see how their designs are interacting with everything around them. These models can be shared through the Cloud, allowing real-time updates by other members of the design team. Sticking to AutoCAD makes it difficult for the architect to see how building systems are interacting and conflicting with critical interior design elements. This means the architect is modeling it themselves (which isn’t their job), or worse: missing it completely. Out of sight, out of mind.

3 – AutoCAD is bad at color. It was primarily developed to create drawings that depended on lineweight and linetype to differentiate elements. That’s fine for construction documents, but it can be a real problem for presentation documents. If I want to take an elevation I’ve drawn and color it with different material textures or finishes, I’ve either got to bog down my CAD file with raster image files that are messy and difficult, or I’ve got to take that drawing into an entirely different software to

create the graphics I need. Either way, I’ve created more work for myself. Meanwhile, a model in Revit can generate literally any 3D view I want in mere seconds that shows all the materials I’ve chosen and input into my project.

4 – AutoCAD doesn’t create databases. Construction drawings are very information dense. Collating all that data into something usable can be tedious, time consuming, and prone to error, not to mention expensive. One of the most powerful benefits of Revit is the ability to query and filter the information your model holds to automatically create schedules, do material takeoffs, count elements, and analyze building components. With a few clicks of a button, I can build a schedule in seconds instead of hours, and I can rely on that schedule being right even when things change.

Now I’m not trying to say AutoCAD is a bad program. It’s not. It’s really great at what it was designed to do: computer aided drafting. If the only thing I need is an intricate and precise 2D drawing, AutoCAD is the best software out there for the job…

But Interior Designers need to do a whole heck of a lot more than just create 2D drawings. We need to convey color and materiality. We need to study spatial relationships. We need to coordinate with architects and engineers in the programs they are using. We need to collate data. We need to help others see what we have visualized for their space.

Mostly though, we need to ditch CAD and embrace the technology that is already available to us, or we will be left behind.

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