[tibbetts]

I dunno, I watched two professional architects not be able to estimate a beam size for a 16’ span without mocking it up in autocad. This delayed us like a week in design iterations, and cost me probably $2000 in architect hours. I own a book inherited from my grandfather that just told me the answer. A 72-year-old architect who helped with a later revision of the project also knew the answer off the top of his head.

That’s not to say I would build the house without doing a proper structural engineering analysis and simulation. But not being able to estimate feasibility without doing the full simulation is a real problem.

[bee_rider]

A 72 year old architect is a person who's decided to keep being an architect after all these years. I bet in 1980, you could find 30 year old architects who would take a week to figure that out. They've just gone into management or retired by now.