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COMPUTING

The School has a full-time Coordinator of Computer Applications to manage and support both the students, staff and the faculty. The technician is responsible for maintaining the School's computers, servers and printers. Students can also find help with configuring their own systems for connection to the FAU network and printing. Help can be found by stopping by during posted hours to the Main Open Computer Lab in HEC-611at the FAU Fort Lauderdale campus.

Studio Computers

The School of Architecture operates multiple studio spaces at the FAU Fort Lauderdale Campus. These are geared towards the program's upper division studio courses and are located on the 6th ,7th and 8th floors of the FAU Higher Education Complex. In addition, the open computer lab located in HEC 611 is available for all FAU students during posted hours,. The lab provides printing services for all students and special printing and plotting for those students in the Architecture studio courses. SoA operates a studio space for the lower division at the FAU Boca Raton Campus. Each semester the studio computers undergo a maintenance cycle in which they are erased and restored with updated software.

Computer Hardware

All labs are equipped with the latest Dell precision desktop computers designed specifically for running architectural software and design packages.

Computer Software

  •  Adobe Creative Cloud - Acrobat DC, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
  • AutoDesk - AutoCad, Revit
  • McNeel- Rhino
  • MecSoft - RhinoCam
  • Trimble - SketchUp
  • Office365 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint

Printing and Plotting

Students have access to two state of the art large format plotters and inkjet printers.

File Services

All FAU Students have access to Cloud Storage via Google Drive to store and share files.

Computing Recommendations

Hardware Recommendations

  • 64 bit Intel or AMD (Not ARM) with Windows 10/11 
  • Apple Mac with Intel or Apple Silicon Processor with OS 13 or higher
  • 8 GB+ RAM minimum
  • 512 GB+ SSD hard drive, 1 TB preferred
  • 8GB+ VRAM (NVIDIA/AMD for advanced modeling)
  • USB ports (3.0 version)
  • Minimum 100MB Ethernet port, 1GB Ethernet port recommended
  • Monitor - 21" or larger (necessary for desktop, optional for laptop)
  • Multi-button mouse
  • Hardware warranty minimum two years
  • 1 TB Hard drive for backup
  • 64 MB or higher flash drive for data transfers

Software Recommendations

  • Microsoft Office 
  • Adobe Acrobat Pro or Free PDF Creation software
  • Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Antivirus - Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, McAfee
  • AutoDesk Educational Products Free Download 
  • SketchUp 
  • Google Earth
  • File transfer software- Dropbox, Box, Google Drive (FAU Student Account)