PDD - PASSED!! – ARE 5.0 Community

I will offer my advice to those studying for this test.

First things first, I crammed for 3 weeks on everything I could find for FREE. The best thing that helped me in answering these questions was having a lot of CA experience with an understanding of construction and what is generally wrong with details. If you don't have the experience putting details together or dealing with a construction set in general, this will be a bit difficult.

What I Studied: (Most of Which you can find for FREE - Look thru old posts)

Building Construction Illustrated (know all the little tiny details in a wall section)

Building Code Illustrated

Architect Studio Companion

Architecture Graphic Standards

Black Spectacles (EXAM's Only to Gauge where they are gathering questions - Provided by the Firm)

Things I ran into, that were not a focus in General Studying:

Wall Section Details (Be Detailed in Studying)

Thermal Calcs (U-Value to R-Value)

Calculating Material Differences

Redlining a Drawing (understanding what is going to change because owner changes, ETC.)

PPD was not related...

When going into the test that is over 4hrs, you must have a game plan. 120 Questions (24-ish of which are Case Studies) plan every moment, you have understand what questions to skip, mark and make note of. Use your break to re-focus then come back and start doing your review of incomplete and marked questions. This test was a marathon brain melter, go in with a plan and avoid being frustrated.

I was confident that I was going to be taking it again and was trying to make sure I knew everything I could for the retake. By the skin of my teeth I passed, PDD was definitely one part study the materials and a lot of how to take the test.

Good luck to everyone out there! I have honestly failed more of these than I care to share, but Passing is possible, even with a full time career, wife and three kids!

Yi Li February 05, 2020 23:55

Congrats! Btw what do you mean by material differences?

Branden Adams February 06, 2020 00:41

What is the cost difference if you were to change from one material to another in a given area.

Allison Gorman February 22, 2020 21:05

Congrats!

I'm using Ballast to study and they give relatively detailed information about calculations for different materials (wood, steel concrete) and sizing members, determining connections, etc. Aside from knowing these general concepts and how to do this, is it necessary to know these formulas and calculations?

Michael Ermann February 23, 2020 17:10

Memorizing formulae for sizing those materials is not a good use of your time relative to other modes of studying. I don't mean to suggest that you would never need to use those on an exam, but the question for you isn't "Could I be asked about this in an NCARB exam ite?," but rather "Would memorizing these get me the most extra questions correct over the next hour of studying?" The answer to that second question is no. Good luck on the exams!--Michael Ermann, Amber Book creator.

PDD - PASSED!!

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