Pauline Mestdagh works as a student intern at Bricsys. Find out how she is gaining practical CAD experience whilst earning money working for Bricsys and learn how she uses her free BricsCAD academic license to gain an edge on her student projects.
Pauline is in her final year, studying Engineering & Architecture at Ghent University. When I spoke to her I could see that she's clearly got a highly creative mind and a talent for design.
She hopes to one day own her own studio designing houses or possibly schools, but wants to gain experience working in other studios first. She particularly admires the work of Bovenbouw Architecture Studio, owned by one of her professors, 'because they use a lot of specialist materials and do a lot of renovations'.
Learning BricsCAD
Before she started working here she had never used BricsCAD before. However, she assures me that learning BricsCAD didn't take her very long, 'as it's quite intuitive'.
Render of CAD project
BricsCAD for student projects
Although her course doesn't require it, Pauline chose to use BricsCAD to build several of her student projects. Most notably, a quirky, corner house project. The brief for this project was to design a house that would fit within a street of art nouveau and art deco buildings, but with a more modern twist. As a result, the finished design is an energetic arrangement of unusually shaped rooms.
To begin the project her and her fellow students were instructed to first build a real-life model. She discovered that, when she came to model the building in BricsCAD, it was much easier and faster to experiment with the design. She could quickly manipulate the room size, wall angles, and the facade, without starting from scratch.
It also gave her an instant sense of space and meant that she could generate section views in seconds.
When she first began the project she was asked to create a physical model. Although beautiful, it is difficult to alter and takes a long time to construct.
She even converted one of her BricsCAD models to virtual reality when she worked on a group university project with other Bricsys student interns. They did this by importing the model into Unity. She tells me that it was "really great to be able to see the building in 3D".
Section views can be automatically generated in seconds.
Soft skills
Alongside practical CAD experience, Pauline also had the opportunity to present at the Bricsys' BIM student event earlier in the year. She and her fellow student interns did an outstanding job presenting to a full house of their peers.
In addition, she has gained invaluable experience working on live projects in an office environment. When she leaves we'll be sad to see her go, but no doubt the architectural world is gaining a bright and talented young woman.
Interested in working for Bricsys?
Why not visit our careers page and see our current vacancies? We're always happy to accept speculative applications from both students and professionals. While you're waiting why not practice with a free BricsCAD student license?
