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My girlfriend is looking to study towards a career in architecture or a similar type role as she really enjoys drawing and possibly learning 3d. I imagine a lot of people on this forum are in these types of careers such as arch viz and would like to know any info on the different types of work you can do within archtecture or a similar role (from you people with experience ).
Any links to references would also be good. Most people imagine architects just draw designs all day which sounds great but obviously its not that fun all the time.
Thanks a lot for any help!

I will PM you in a sec.

Good question. I was pretty surprised when I first got into architecture. Basically school will reinforce the idea that it's all drawing, designing, rendering, etc. The more outlandish your designs and the better your presentation skills, the better grades you'll get.

Once you get a career though, things are of course different. I work at a large design-build office containing a number of departments; architectural design, architectural production, structural, electrical, interior design, civil, mechanical, estimating, project development, and probably a couple I'm forgetting.

In the states, after you graduate you will start working and get into the IDP program which is your path to getting licensed. Basically you have to get so many hours in things like design, site visits, construction drawings (you'll get many hours here as most of your days will be spent on AutoCad), project management, etc. That will typically take around 3 years at which point you can take the tests to become registered.

Incidentally, at a large firm like where i work getting registered is fairly meaningless. You can do all the work an architect does so long as at the very end an architect puts his stamp on it.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to go back and forth between rendering, design, and production. Even still we don't really do any local projects so I have hardly any hours in site visits. Working for a smaller firm would speed that along greatly. The rest of my fellow interns are and have always worked in Arch Production. They won't be drawing anything and the most they'll typically design are various building details rather than the buildings themselves.

All that said, I still really enjoy it, even if it's not what they prepare you for in school. For example, despite the fact that we don't design the exteriors of our buildings like we did in school, I've learned to appreciate the aspect of design that goes into the interior of the building. And there are those who really enjoy designing those details.

-Brodie