Illistration Software

I am in the unique situation in a Career and Technology field where I teach an Academic Software. I teach courses that lead in two seperate directions, engineering and architecture. I am going to focus on engineering at this point.

CAD has redifined the term Illistration software in the engineering field over the past few years. We started AutoCAD, a two dimensional drawing software with some 3D capabilites. We have evolved to a program Called Autodesk Inventor, a 3D modeling software that allows Renderings, animations and digital prototyping.

My engineering courses spend a semester in each program. AutoCAD teaches the 2D skills still needed to be a successful engineer. We then spend the whole second semester in Autodesk Inventor. This is my biggest draw in my program. Students are visual. The love working in 3D and with rendering and animations. In a high school program like mine the software not only needs to teach the students but the students also need to enjoy what they are doing. That is what gets them interested and that is what gets them back.

Just a final thought on academic software in education. I believe education needs to follow industry with its software and schools who can stay ahead of the industry curve have more marketable students.

Here is an example of what students can do with Autodesk Inventer. This was the winner of last years Autodesk Design Contest.