Need advise please.

Hi everyone

here is my story.

I am in my 40s with no college education just a CAD certificate from 1994 ( 900 hours)

( never had a job in that field).

I am doing graphic design for about 7 years now. ( Photoshop, illustrator, corelDraw.)

I started learning Solidworks and Keyshot couple of years ago ,designing part and such for myself.( never had a job in that field)

couple of weeks ago I started on Autocad Revit .

I love designing 3D models , no matter if it a building or a part.

What would you advise if I wanted to do a career change and make good money?

Ideally I would like to make around 60K a year.

Attached is one of my work I created from scratch

Thank you all

Alex

Thanks for Sharing

My humble advice is to search locally for work, hopefully if you live in a developed country you will find job.

If you want to freelance online you may need to invest much more time and money building your reputation and improving your skills. cause you'll be competing with the whole world... but honestly it's not worth it, I used to have high expectations until I saw freelancing sites like fiverr I was very disappointed. now I'm thinking of completely getting away from 3D business or doing it from time to time for the fun.

for graphic design It's even worse, cause it doesn't take much for people to start making logos and brochures...etc, the competition is more stiff, unlike 3D at least you need a good computer to make good art.

What would you advise if I wanted to do a career change and make good money?

Ideally I would like to make around 60K a year.

If you like modeling and rendering then making 60K+ a year as a freelancer is possible but like Khaled said you need to improve your skills. Luckily for you there is a wealth of information available online for free all you have to do is look for it. I would focus on building up a solid portfolio of work target at the industry you are looking to get work from. If your more interested in the modeling side then getting a Revit certification will help you get in the door.

For product modeling and rendering, look at professional photography and try to replicate them to build your skill.

As for work, stay away from the freelancer websites. I suggest finding community sites based on your software (revit in this case) and get active in their forums. This helps you pick up techniques and deepen your knowledge of everything 3D. If you participate wisely, you build reputation as well as gain access to lots of talented/experienced people. Some have member competitions, which can push you to improve faster. Many of these communities also have job forums and you might get lucky to pick up some work after a while of building up your skills. It's not easy, but it's somewhere to start if you don't have any contacts IRL.

Just another quick suggestion.. Since you already have graphics skills, maybe look into the motion graphics industry. It's a more specialized area of CG because it takes a deeper understanding of animation and simulation systems, which is a giant step above static product imagery. There is huge potential for lots of various work in motion graphics (ads, simulations, cartoons, vfx, etc) once you get in the door.

Good luck!

Honestly it would be very difficult to get any sort of job with no practical experience in an architectural office for at least a year. If you started right at the bottom as a junior you might get a job for £15k possibly as firms are desperate for Revit people, but like I say they expect practical experience and if you had say a couple of years working in a BIM level 2/3 architectural office using Revit you might be able to get between £30-40k+ depending on where you worked, possibly even £50k in London.