My first job out of college (1997) was at an architecture firm in Dallas and in theory I was there to provide 3D graphics, but really I mostly just played print boy. Anyways, they were an AutoCAD (CAD being computer-aided drafting) shop and I brought the old DOS version of 3D Studio as a skill with me and learned 3D Studio Max while I was there. (Shapes may be pushed from AutoCAD to either of these and there is incentive to build in AutoCAD first as the mathematical precision of measurements doesn't exist in the other tools.) There was another guy there, an architect fresh out of Texas Tech, who brought MicroStation with him and did some 3D graphics in MicroStation. I have coworker in modern times who used to draft and he said that, yes, MicroStation was first with the 3D, and came with a lot of things like 3D (and also scheduling) backed into its framework (not unlike TFS being an ALM not merely source control) where as you had to drag that in from other places to get AutoCAD to do that stuff as it didn't do it standalone. And yet, MicroStation otherwise has nothing to recommended it per my coworker. It's Mickey Mouse ghetto yo. Revit is apparently now the way to do 3D with AutoCAD. You may build in 3D now and render out both elevations and floorplans from the models minimizing duplicate work, but there is no way to take the old 2D plans from earlier versions of AutoCAD and get them on 3D. Also 3D elevations often have to have variations from the tight tying to floorplans photoshopped into them per my colleague if your shop wants such a thing. Rule of thumb: For every four stories on a building, one guy died during the construction of it.
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