Master of Architecture in Urban Design Program (MAUD), Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design Program (MLAUD) Required Software Tutorials

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Below is a list of software used in the Urban Design program. All students are expected to arrive to the GSD knowing AutoCAD, Rhino, ArcGIS, Grasshopper, Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. Incoming students, particularly those without prior experience, are encouraged to complete beginning-level and intermediate-level tutorials in order to easily being your program. If you already have experience in this software, it is still recommended that you practice applying these skills before arriving for your Preterm Workshop.


Downloading Software

Some of the software you will use at the GSD is available with a Harvard site license that is available to you once you arrive on campus. To access the software before arriving to campus, and in order to work on the tutorials, please download and install the software trials:

AutoCAD (30 days) is available for a free download to students. You will need to create an account, but you do not need your Harvard email address to do so.

• ArcGIS is available from Harvard's Center for Geographic Analysis; you will need to request a single-use license to download, but your HarvardKey should be enough to grant you access.

• Grasshopper is a free Rhino plug-in available for download.

Rhino has a free 90-day trial period, so you can download now and then switch to using Harvard's license once you are on campus.

• Other software, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, After Effects), must be purchased. You can access student discounts on these products through once you have claimed your HarvardKey.

• You may also use software such as QGIS and Revit periodically.





AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 01 Interface and Drawing Management:

This Tutorial with Jeff Bartels is a multi-part series that takes a more modular approach to the program. The first half of the series begins with a complete tour of the interface, from understanding and working with 2D and 3D CAD design, drafting, and modeling, as well as using dockable palettes. The second half
of the course shows how to manage your drawings, including getting the most from the mouse and many shortcuts, creating time-saving templates and plotting from either model space or in a layout. Topics include launching AutoCAD, accessing the tools, saving a workspace, monitoring the status bar, understanding the anatomy of a command, opening a drawing, zooming, panning and regenning, working in a multiple-document environment, and saving your work.

AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 02 Drawing Fundamentals:

Topics include constructing lines, defining a unit of measure, locking to a geometry with object snaps, drawing rectangles, circles, and polygons, applying hatch patterns, moving, copying, and rotating objects, erasing elements, and undoing and redoing actions.

AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 03 Editing and Organizing Drawings:

Topics include adding and removing from selections, stretching elements, creating mirrored copies, leveraging grips, editing hatch patterns, using layers to organize a drawing, changing layer states, taking measurements, and constructing a multi- view part.

AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 04 Annotating a Drawing:

Topics include creating single line text, justifying text, controlling appearance with styles, building bulleted and numbered lists, annotating with multi-line text, adding continuous and baseline dimensions, and creating and modifying multileaders.

AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 05 Working with References:

Topics include inserting blocks, building a block library, creating a link to a DWG file, controlling the appearance of referenced drawings, choosing between attach and overlay, building references, clipping images, and sizing images.

AutoCAD 2014 Essentials: 06 Sharing Drawings with Others:

Topics include creating quick plots, choosing line weights, creating, organizing and reusing labels, using the Annotative property to size text and multileaders, creating custom scales, saving drawings to other formats, and plotting to PDF and DWF.





Rhino 5 Essential Training with Dave Schultze:

Rhino 5 Essential Training is a beginner tutorial on the basics of Rhinocerous3D. Rhino is a NURBS-based modeling program that is one of the main programs we use to make 3D digital models. The tutorial topics are: Why use Rhino? Understanding 3D terminology, Comparing Bezier curves B-splines and NURBS objects, Navigating the viewport, Manipulating objects with commands, Creating curves surfaces and solids, Performing basic transformations, Making solids with primitives, Extruding curves, Snapping to objects and planes, Trimming splitting rotating and copying objects, Working with NURBS and seams, and Prototyping a 3D model.





Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals:

We use illustrator to edit line drawings such as sections, plans, or axons. This tutorial will give an overview of creating elegant and optimized graphics. The tutorial topics include rotating and duplicating objects, grouping and stacking, erasing and painting selected paths, using the shape builder tool, reflecting across an angled axis, placing and flowing text, creating page margins, adjusting type size, using the Glyphs panel, and inserting and removing anchor points.




Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate:

This tutorial is a continuation of the beginner. It reviews how to effectively manage layers, clipping groups, and swatches. Topics include creating layers, sub-layers and groups, lifting a color and creating a swatch, adjusting the stacking order, masking a pattern inside a background, creating a radial gradient, adding a credible 3D cast shadow, creating and painting and overlapping path, and previewing and printing documents.

Creating a Map with Illustrator:

This tutorial will teach you to create a custom map that provides clean and accurate details that you want to highlight. This tutorial covers understanding different types of maps, sketching out a map, creating a tracing template, drawing major and minor roadways, using graphic styles, drawing bodies of water parks and other land marks, and how to share the map.

Tracing Artwork with Illustrator:

This tutorial goes over how to convert raster graphics into a vector format using the Image Trace panel. The topics include analyzing the exiting artwork, developing a tracing plan, exploring the three steps of tracing, adjusting the curve fitting, combining paths into shapes, and applying colors to the artwork.




Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Advanced:

For people with experience in illustrator, this course will help you to master the program. This tutorial is a project-based learning approach that uses key features in Illustrator such as recolor artwork, transparency, masks, blend modes, strokes and fills, and dynamic effects. Topics include creating a multicolor blend, understanding the color managed workflow, establishing a clipping mask, blending different levels of opacity, combining a letterform with a path outline, mixing and matching color harmonies, working with the calligraphic, scatter, and art brushes, creating translucency, and adjusting and updating the dynamic effects.





InDesign CS6 Essential Training:

InDesign is an essential tool for layout of ad, magazines, newspapers, and books. We use it to layout our presentation boards, books that we create or our portfolios. This tutorial presents the core features and techniques that make this program easy to use. Topics include understanding your workspace, creating and setting up new documents, creating and applying master pages, entering and editing text, placing graphics, working with color and gradients, editing frame and path shapes, working with layers, objects, and groups, rotating and scaling objects, using styles, applying character and paragraph formatting, and packaging, printing and exporting your final document.




InDesign Secrets:

This tutorial shares some hidden and sometimes surprising workflow tips that will make working in InDesign more efficient. The course covers built-in time saving features such as Quick Apply and autoexpanding text, but also little-known tricks such as using the eyedropper to copy and paste character and paragraph text attributes and making accurate selections by selecting through or into objects.





* Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals:

This tutorial covers fundamental image editing concepts and techniques from the beginning that are very useful. Topics include navigating, zooming, panning, rotating the canvas, adding deleting and merging layers, understanding file formats, cropping and straightening, adjusting brightness and contrast, and identifying and correcting a color cast.

Photoshop CS6 Quick Start for Photographers:

While we're not photographers, we use photos constantly to help us depict scenes from our designs or to convey ideas that we have. This tutorial will go over features that are essential for working in Photoshop to help you work more efficiently and the most important features in Photoshop. The course includes a guide to Photoshop, setting up your environment, color fundamentals, image resolution, the histogram, basic adjustments, saving in different file formats and output workflow.

Photoshop CS6 Selections and Layer Masking Workshop:

This tutorial goes over how to control the adjustments you make in your images. Topics include antialiasing and selections, the case for not feathering selections, adding subtracting and intersecting, inverting a selection, mixing and matching selection tools, creating composite images, and applying targeted adjustments.

Photoshop CS6 Image Cleanup Workshop:

Many images that we photograph, or use can have issues such as spots, blemishes, color casts or chromatic aberration. This tutorial reviews how to clean up an image using different tools. These tools include the clone stamp, healing brush, spot healing brush, patch tool, brightening and whitening, reducing noise, gradient adjustments, and extending the frame.




Creating Composites in Photoshop:

In this course, Sean Duggan presents eight fast-paced tutorials, each aimed at a particular aspect of Photoshop compositing: making smarter selections, creating quick layer masks, and working with blend modes. Each tutorial demonstrates an essential compositing skill in a project that takes 10 minutes or less to complete.

The Art of Photoshop Compositing:

In this course, Julieanne Kost walks you through her creative thought process and explains how she transforms concepts and raw images into entirely new works of art using Adobe Photoshop. Discover how to select the images you need to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Master the tools used in compositing, including adjustment layers, masking, blending, and Smart Objects. Learn how to adjust scale and perspective and manipulate texture and focus to help viewers temporarily suspend their disbelief long enough to enter your world.

Photoshop Filters for Photography:

Filters are a great way to stylize or distort your images. This tutorial cover both simple and complex effects from black and white, monochromatic tints, and film grain to Surface Blur, Tilt-Shift Blur and Oil Paint. Topics include working with the filter gallery, creating a black and white effect, applying a
vignette, adding motion blur, smearing with liquify, and mapping the image with trace contour.




Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Advanced:

This tutorial is great for those who have a basic understanding of Photoshop but are interested in learning the inner workings of the program. Topics include transforming and warping vector objects, correcting for lens distortion, mitigating halos and enhancing contrast with Shadows/Highlights, adding and editing points on a curve, creating pro-quality sepia tone or quadtone, colorizing with blend modes and opacity, reducing and smoothing over noise, perfecting a mask with a refine edge, and converting path outlines to vector masks.


Additional Advanced Optional Software: The following are not required but are useful to explore and will come in handy in many of the classes you may encounter through your studies here:



QGIS (previously known as Quantum GIS) is a free and open-source cross platform desktop geographic information system (GIS) application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of geospatial data.



Revit is building information modeling software for architects, landscape architects, structural engineers, MEP engineers, designers and contractors. The software allows users to design a building and structure and its components in 3D, annotate the model with 2D drafting elements, and access building information from the building model's database.


Adobe After Effects

