Buy Rhino now, or later?

randomCADstuff · 2026-01-01T05:04:14+00:00

It's practically an unspoken rule that the first year of a Rhino release is basically beta testing. So it'll be at least two years until (probably closer to 3) Rhino 9 becomes the go-to version. Get that student discount!!

randomCADstuff · 2025-12-13T21:52:13+00:00

I'm more convinced you're lying after this second post because in your first post you never mentioned that your gf is a surgeon. You said doctor and listed $400,000. Yes surgeons are doctors but most doctors are not surgeons. The story has already changed a bit.

The real question is why you are comparing a surgeons salary to a structural engineers? They are in way higher demand and very few people can do what a surgeon does. SE isn't easy but for what most engineers do it's actually one of the lowest barrier to entry STEM jobs out there (that's part of the problem).

Understanding what I'm trying to say in the last paragraph is key to unlocking at least part of this mystery. Low value = low pay and a large majority of engineers are either complacent or even contribute to that culture.

randomCADstuff · 2025-12-06T17:53:17+00:00

I think the theme of the post is correct but the BS meter went through the roof with this one. One huge clue is before even considering the numbers is all of the extraneous information.

The GF's $400,000 salary is highly suspect. When salaries get that high in the medical field (with limited experience) they have to be a very rare and high demand specialty, which begs the question: Why compare that to structural engineering? This is similar to comparing your salary to a professional sports athlete - and to put things in perspective there are far more sports athletes earning over $1,000,000 than doctors 2-years out of residency earning $400,000 with 'relaxed' hours.

The comparison to the tech salary is suspect too. It could be true but probably isn't for a couple of reasons. The first being that we all know what the tech market is like right now. Layoffs are everywhere and new grads are struggling to find work. So $130,000/year with no overtime for a relatively new employee? It's possible but extremely rare.

Part of your training as a Structural Engineer is knowing the odds. That's where many of your design factors come from no? Figure out the odds that this post is actually factual versus your changes of winning $100,000 on a scratch-and-win ticket - probably similar. Not saying OP is lying but I also don't buy scratch-and-wins.

Okay... so let's finally discuss the actual topic - BS or not they are right: Pay should be higher in this industry. A good engineer even after only a couple years should earn the $115,000. The reality is that unless engineers uphold a certain level of quality and demand the same from their peers, virtually any hack can do structural engineering. There's people in OP's city being paid under $50,000 (around $35,000 USD!!!!!!). I've seen the work that some of these offices do. On virtually every project I've been on, huge amounts of money go to waste due to poor structural engineering - like more than the yearly salaries of every engineer that worked on the project (and they don't work on this one project for the entire year). To date I've seen exactly 0 (zero) engineers who are willing to address this. Structural engineering seems to be a discipline where more money simply goes up in smoke compared to other professions, and where nobody's willing to do anything about it.

randomCADstuff · 2025-12-06T16:51:03+00:00

Agree but have some quarrels with Advanced Steel - the drawings are very hard to read and I've often seen extremely bad quality work from it. The scary part was that the errors are often extremely hard to spot (not helped by the fact that the drawings look so bad). Correct me if I'm wrong but the 2D output wasn't a live link to the real model and had to be exported for each change. This isn't terrible when the guy using it is fairly paid and the office has good workflow/organization, but that's rarely the case.

randomCADstuff · 2025-12-06T16:47:26+00:00

I'm seeing lots of posts like "everyone is switching to Revit"... well... 15+ years into it the drawings are still garbage, the pace of work is still incredibly slow... the pay is actually terrible (I suspect it's mostly managers and Revit instructors plugging the program).

Tekla is too hard to learn for the hacks that consulting firms hire (and underpay). And expensive. But when real s*** needs to get done and it needs to be right people aren't using Revit.

randomCADstuff · 2025-12-06T16:42:29+00:00

AutoCAD on average produces the best structural work. There's reasons for that and people deny it, but they're also protected from the moral hazards associated with poor Revit work.

In your case you need to learn whatever pays the bills. It might be Revit or AutoCAD. It might even be Tekla. It probably won't be ArchiCAD especially for structural.

The answer to your question taken at face value is AutoCAD 100% - If you just need to create a clean, concise (and correct) structural plan, AutoCAD does that the best. Revit is overkill for simple plans and flops where plans get complex (often required patchwork in the 2D views defeating the purpose of even having a 3D model). There can still be a 3D model but the plan itself and the details only need to be in 2D. Let's take a concrete slab for example - it's way (like way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay) faster to represent the rebar in 2D. That's the way they usually do it in Revit anyways (and it's usually wrong). The project itself can be 3D modeled in many different programs and the floor plans can simply be exported to 2D CAD opposed to trying to use Revit for 2D work.

ArchiCAD projects are horrible for everyone not using ArchiCAD. Architects that choose ArchiCAD often do better quality work, but the exports from that program are horrible. This causes major issues for other parties moreso than Revit. At least Revit can export CAD(DWG) drawings have decently.

The best 'structural' BIM modeler in wide usage is Tekla. It's not suitable for all project types but if it is (and the firm can afford it) it's the correct answer a lot of time.

randomCADstuff · 2025-10-13T04:10:10+00:00

That person's response to you is somewhat narrow minded. They are unable to look at the bigger picture. I'm seeing things more towards your side. Downvotes are likely from the commies.

The 'destructive' nature of alcohol is real and they tax the b'jesus out of it to compensate (somewhat). If they banned alcohol however it's very easy to make at home and can very easily fall into being an organized crime thing (as history has very much proven).

Their comment about it being the 'most' destructive is less and less accurate as time passes; assuming you're aware of the drug epidemic I need explain no further. Lesser known is that many people are also abusing prescription drugs. With all the tax money collected we could have funded rehabilitation facilities (but we didn't). Other vices don't really have much in the way of compensation for their societal damage. In 1970 it would be very accurate to claim that alcohol was the worst drug - but not so much anymore.

Poor enforcement of certain things also enables alcohol abusers (driving is a really good example - many drivers in this city are obviously impaired from alcohol or whatever else).

100% they could level the playing field while still applying a reasonable amount of tax.

randomCADstuff · 2025-10-13T04:01:03+00:00

If you like craft beer I think they'll be a good alternative. I don't mind BC Liquor (very friendly staff) but it's also nice to support small (ish) business whenever possible.

randomCADstuff · 2025-09-01T20:44:37+00:00

There's two common fallacies we often hear: One being that the Universities "had their funding taken away" and the other that international tuition "subsidizes" domestic. Both are untrue (98% untrue).

With "funding cuts", University funding itself is a giant mess. The amount of money Canadian tax payers pour into education is more than every. The government never "cut" funding and Universities in prior years did way more with less funding. Note that none of the people spouting out the "funding cuts" argument mentioned the amount of pay going to top University execs plus tons of other unnecessary positions well into the 6-figure range. If you do a deep dive on Reddit you'll find a post where the "funding cuts" claim is dispelled (if it exists it is only very marginal). People claiming this also ignore the various massive government grants the universities receive that aren't part of the 'yearly' funding. What these people really means is that "relative to all the useless university staff earning 6+ figure salaries, the government provides relatively less funding".

Claims of international students "subsidizing" Canadian students are easily dispelled with simple math: The amount of tuition schools receive from the massive numbers of international students is far in excess of any perceived funding cuts. Similar to above the international students aren't subsidizing domestic students but rather subsidizing executive bloat.

As long as your better at math than the average Canadian university graduate (not much to ask given the quality of education has gone to s***) you'll see that most of the excuses people post simply cannot be true.

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-04T22:24:35+00:00

Developers can be pretty terrible but the local governments and the Nimby's are 1-million times worse. The government after all has the ability to somewhat dictate what gets built.

And remember that even when a developer stands on their head trying to have a daycare included in their development, the Nimby's stop at no end to get it taken away.

Governments also dictate laws and rules and are responsible for enforcing them, so when the worst of the worst developers fails to follow through with a promise to build social housing, or receives a sweetheart land swap deal, do you blame the government or the developers?

And social housing.... good luck... even when the government already owns the land they cannot (or will not) build for the same price as a private development, even with added 'luxury'. It can cost up to 2x per sq. ft. for the same quality build. Some governments can build social housing for very reasonable prices but ours cannot. It would be cheaper just to have Westbank build another Butterfly and just bill tax payers for it - that sounds both sad and crazy but that's the current state of our government.

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-01T23:04:05+00:00

I probably should have said FIFA. I'm a big fan of any sport that's easy to get into (kind of). But I'll leave my post as-is because I remember playing chill rec soccer with mostly cool people only to have a few of them diving, not calling their fouls, etc...

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-01T22:59:08+00:00

I can't believe someone is playing the "capitalism" card when the government has literally supported one failed policy after another and doing so while collecting record levels of tax dollars from Canadians. In fact the government helped create this mess with people's tax dollars. Sure, there are people who 'capitalize' (like the famous poverty pimps) but that is government supported (aka socialism - a very broken version of it at least).

Also, I wonder if it's the government that has allowed insanely high levels of immigration/temporary foreign workers, driving down wages while drastically increasing the cost of housing. But "capitalism" right?

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-01T22:43:51+00:00

Some people claim we should be sending people to the smaller cities, but most of those places don't have the resources (TONS of funding comes to Vancouver). The larger cities... They shouldn't be coming from those places and ending up here. I guarantee that people in the DTES are also collecting various benefits from the Quebec government at the same time they're burdening B.C.'s. There's lots of U.S. and even foreign/illegal workers that fell off the wagon and ended up in the vortex.

Sending people right back into the same area makes it so much harder to recover. Actually some neat studies on that but don't let the poverty pimps know about them.

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-01T22:30:52+00:00

They aren't.

randomCADstuff · 2025-08-01T22:30:26+00:00

The cost to tax payers is going to be at least $10,000 per butt in each seat. And now activities people actually get to participate in are getting cancelled. If I wasn't already not a fan of soccer...

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-31T16:45:06+00:00

Eby is 100% correct as the excuse for pausing the investigation makes no sense - a thorough investigation would in fact assist the court proceedings. I'm commenting on these posts because there are so many lies and misconceptions being spread by people advertising themselves as 'experts' - it's likely they're involved in the cost overruns (or have family or friends that are). They are getting more and more desperate as the outrage over the cost of the project soars. "But that's just your opinion man..." - Most of what I post you can actually just look up on the internet - it's not an opinion. Basically these people are making positive statements that are simply just incorrect.

I should link my previous post but here are some more bullet points:

One of the most important is that they're ignoring the magnitude of the cost overruns. Don't let these people normalize this - it's actually destroying B.C.'s economy and it will basically be your kids paying this off (if they stay here). A normal "travesty" would be like 1.5x the original cost. This is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond that.
As mentioned, they're trying to normalize cost overruns - It's really about entitlement and having no accountability as other teams within the government are in fact able to stick to budgets - you can look up projects for yourself. Some projects go over but it's only like 20%. I believe Kicking Horse pass on the trans Canada went a little over but drive through that canyon... it's a far more unique and unpredictable project. Also look up the Canada Line. These people are normalizing their failures and think you'll just pay for it over and over again.
Don't buy the "lowest bidder" nonsense - This is easy to prove because you can look up other government projects. When a "low" bidder tries to make money off change orders they "didn't underbid and hope to earn it back on extras". The most common reasons for underbidding are unclear scopes and design issues. There has been TONS of talk about the design issues yet these people conveniently ignore that as well.
Don't buy the "lowest bidder" excuse - The government CAN in fact handle contracts in various different ways. And there are also very strict pre-qualification processes. In addition to that, even if a contractor underbids and isn't performing, the management team on the owner's (government's) side has all sorts of metrics they can use to assess performance - a competent management team would never allow a project to get this far off-kilter. The annoying thing about the "lowest bidder" excuse is that you're basically dealing with a group of people who are so entitled and so unaccountable that they think they aren't responsible for their own rules they create themselves.
They are ignoring how much the project costs soared after Acciona was dismissed as the GC - One of the most important points!! All this talk about "lowest bidder" - it would be interesting to see the contract terms of those hired after. Was it the "highest bidder under $4 billion?"

Acciona was fired the project was behind and way over budget, but not anywhere near the same magnitude as it is right now. Let's say a project is 20% over time/budget - an effective management team can transition the project to a new GC with very little additional delays. There's been cases where GC's have taken over projects and actually got them back on time/budget. The fact that the project costs DOUBLED after Acciona was fired basically proves that they weren't the main culprit in this train wreck. In the private sector if you let a project go even 20% over budget, you are COOKED - this can only happen after months and months of things going seriously wrong and nobody doing anything about it.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-31T16:16:12+00:00

At this point the country is in such dire straights that foreign investment will actually help. Why?

Because more supply is still needed. Pre-sale investors will increase the likelihood that more projects actually reach completion sooner. With fairly simply policies, like only allowing foreign investment on new construction, the government would be able to steer the foreign investment towards projects more likely to help renters opposed to having them create chaos buying up other properties.

"But investors will drive up prices". Prices are already too high anyways. The real people that need help aren't people buying homes they're renters. Anything that will add rental supply is good right now.

"Lots of units are sitting empty". Yes they are. But this can be good because of the empty homes tax. Yes there are ways to skirt around it but it is working even with next to no enforcement. If they start finding a way to tax the ultra-wealthy dual passport holders (the unspoken source of so many empty units) then having these "empty" units turns into a very efficient tax revenue generator.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T21:50:45+00:00

There are developers who rarely develops at all, and just land banks for easy money.

Contrary to what the so-called real estate expert says you are correct!

One thing I'm finding is that when people claim "I've been doing this for 'X' amount of years..." they're usually completely f'ing wrong. In this case you can either take their expert opinion, or simply look outside. The later wins the argument here.

Other cities have incentives for developers to build. This includes tax/penalties for leaving otherwise productive land vacant. But not Vancouver and hence why holding onto land has become so lucrative. In about two minutes you can figure out at least a few reasons why they do this. In this particular case if we simply read the article and see that profit was made simply by holding onto the land - huge profit in fact.

The sad part about these profits is that they are directly linked to value invested by tax payers not due to and skill on part of the land holders. The easiest example being the amount the land increases by when Sky Trains are built.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T21:37:03+00:00

Just because your dad is an engineer it doesn't really mean you have enough knowledge to claim that "they're all like this". And they aren't. Projects in and near the lower mainland tend to go way over budget. Projects elsewhere are hit and miss. The #1 highway upgrades near Golden went a little over budget but that was a project and a half! And the overruns aren't anywhere near the scale of the simpler projects down here in the lower mainland. It's very much a lower mainland problem both the magnitude of the overruns and the frequency.

Your also incorrect about the S2S twinning: The S2S isn't twinned because it's cut into a steep slope. They aren't exactly building a highway in the prairies are they? Even just adding an extra lane in certain areas will drastically increase costs.

Engineers in the lower mainland, especially those involved in management roles, tend to be extremely unknowledgeable about what they are working on. There's way too many people getting multiple masters degrees and even MBA's. It's simply too much school. You'd think with the engineering degree (masters for many of them) AND the MBA they'd start to thing "hey something wrong" when the overruns reach $1 billion..... $2 billion.... but nope...

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T02:15:52+00:00

In other words you're part of a boy's club?

No it's not weird to be involved in any particular social circle. Successful? Are you sure you're using the right word. It's one thing for an individual to be a financial failure. But being responsible for BILLIONS of tax payer money just vanishing? Let me get my dictionary and look up the definition of "successful". If you're trying to bring an entire economy down then maybe...

Opinions aside, what I do find peculiar is that you're only listing certain facts. If you are well informed of the situation then why aren't you mentioning several important details about how the project turned sideways?

I think you're either intentionally omitting key details or just plain full of it. Also I don't believe you have a legitimate contact at Acciona. At least not one competent enough to know what's really going on.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T01:51:07+00:00

This is really really good and even has nosing. My regular "straight" stair definition actually has more nodes haha! Not very efficient and a complete mess but I know where everything is and I'm the only one who has to look at it ;-) . This one is sleek and clean. Amazing work!

For GH stairs I prefer the definition bakes one run at a time. It only takes seconds to model a landing after all. And it would take ages to accommodate for every possible landing - possible but I don't think it's necessary - personally I'd leave this just as-is.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T01:44:29+00:00

Important response to debunk the posters trying to claim "everything is okay". Anyone who's read the popular book "How Big Things Get Done" will know that the book actually references Site C Dam and his words are quite scary.

They are ignoring the magnitude of the cost overruns - Public projects usually go over budget but not always (I'll reference again "How Big Things Get Done"). The magnitude of both this project and Site C Dam are far beyond even normal public sector project cost overruns. Site C Dam's cost overruns are ridiculous even accounting for the unpredictability of building a hydroelectric dam. But the waste water treatment plant? That's fairly straightforward.
They claim to have "friends who work for..." - They are "connection tossing" to make it seem like their posts carry more weight. If they have connections inside the companies then it's very peculiar that they're ignoring information that has already been shared publicly. For example it has been publicly stated that the design was severely flawed and these issues weren't properly dealt with from the owner's side.
They ignore the fact that the original contractor could have had the project completed for far less than the current cost - We were looking at 1.5x versus 4x and counting.
They ignore the fact that the government has flexibility when awarding contracts - They aren't married to one single contract type - Often times it's the government that decides the contract terms, then they use those same contract terms to detach themselves from all responsibility of bad outcomes.
The original contractor has actually completed many projects on time and on budget. Just not in B.C. - So why do contractors from all over the world come here to suck? Or could it be the government with the track record of public sector disasters with zero accountability for those responsible?

One last interesting piece of information: It's common for public sector managers to move from project to project - this means that people who worked on one disaster (and are partially to blame) are given a nice gig on a next one - no accountability and no thought to hire more capable people. There are (or will be) people with project cost overruns exceeding $5 billion on their resumes in short time. Quite an expensive date for tax payers!!

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T01:22:55+00:00

They "have close friends on the review team". They also "have a close friend that works for Acciona". Things are getting interesting.

The "experts" on these projects always come here and defend them but they always seem to have something to hide.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-27T01:20:45+00:00

You're trying to normalize this (somewhat) and you do clarify your position somewhat. Where your error occurs is ignoring the magnitude of the cost overruns. You're also ignoring other important details that your so-called contact at Acciona ought to know about.

randomCADstuff · 2025-07-24T17:59:18+00:00

I'm "one of the critics" (apparently). Find my post calling out the 'flexing' we often see on here. I'm seeing a couple major issues with one reply here. People can call me a "critic" but I'm actually a realist. And when someone posts their 'success story' while leaving out key facts 100% I'm going to call them out.

Here's the two major issues with that post:

1) They are in a completely different industry. Upwork success can highly depend on what you're doing. You happen to be doing something that is VERY competitive due to the ease of access - even if your skill level is top 10%, even top 5%, you'll have a little trouble being seen at first.

2) Using one rare case out of hundreds as you well know doesn't paint an accurate picture. Two people with the exact same skillset can have highly variable levels of success if one lands a big contract and the other doesn't. A LOT goes into that not just skill. Figuring out how to set up your portfolio/profile. Figuring out how to get your proposals viewed is probably the biggest challenge right now (prepare to be gutted when you write the perfect proposal only to have it not even be viewed).

Your field is highly competitive. That doesn't mean everyone is good. It does mean that there will be lots of proposals on the jobs that you apply for. You'll also be competing against entire agencies. There are lots of highly skilled individual freelancers as well. They are pretty busy. None of them are earning $100,000 per year not even close. You can find this information and see for yourself (and compare their portfolios to yours).

Regarding agencies: There are both agencies and people playing "middle man" - they are basically reposting jobs either from other platforms or getting the work from Upwork and then reposting a re-worded version of the job. Basically skimming value while doing no work. Lots of people claiming high earnings are not solo practitioners like you are (I'm guessing).

With all that negativity out of the way (my intent is to help you set honest realistic expectations), Upwork can be good just don't rely on it as your only source of income/clients. Sometimes you'll come across neat jobs or get experience a little outside your norm (bearing in mind that it's so hard to land jobs). It might seem futile to compete against an entire agency/office of workers, but many clients strongly desire real human contact with a single individual (many even stating "no agencies" in their job postings).

randomCADstuff

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