Hi. I’m Jason Kunkel. I’ve been living in the world of design technology for 25+ years, and somehow I’m still finding new things to complain about. That’s a good sign.
I graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in architecture in 1995. I was going to design buildings. Then I discovered that I was more interested in the tools that make the designs, and a career in CAD and BIM support was born. Turns out “the IT guy who also understands design” is a pretty useful person to have around.
These days I’m the Director of Design Technology at Moseley, where I help teams work smarter with the software they’re already using, and try to find new technology to make their work easier. Before that, I spent years as a consultant. Which is a fancy way of saying I showed up at firms, figured out what was broken, and tried not to make it worse. I learned a lot. Mostly by making mistakes first.
Along the way I’ve had the chance to build things. Real tools, used by real people — including some work on the Autodesk Interoperability Tools that are apparently still running in the wild and still generating complaints. You’re welcome.
I speak at conferences. You can usually find me at AU, either on a stage or wandering the expo floor with the slightly lost look of someone who just came from a very good session and is now trying to find coffee.
Oh, and I wrote a comic book about Revit fundamentals. Yes, really. It made sense at the time and I still stand by it.
Why this blog? The tagline says it all: because they don’t teach you this in school.
Nobody hands you a manual for the actual job. Not the soft skills, not the hard-won tricks, not the “here’s why Revit is doing that weird thing” explanations. You figure it out over years, through a combination of documentation, forums, and sheer stubbornness.
This Field Guide is my attempt to put some of that down in one place. Tips, opinions, war stories, the occasional rant. Stuff I wish someone had told me earlier. Stuff I tell people now and then think “I should write that down”.
If you work in design tech… CAD Manager, BIM Manager, Design Technology Specialist, or whatever your firm is calling it this year… this is for you.
I live in Northern Virginia with an amount of Lego that I prefer not to quantify.
Come say hi at a conference. Or just subscribe.
Design Tech Field Guide 