by Zanno » Mon Apr 17, 2017 3:19 pm
I had passed all three 4.0 exams (CDS, PPP, SPD) and became eligible to transition to 5.0 about 5 days before Feb 28. Figuring I was 'playing with house money' as it were, I went for it and took PDD the very last day I was eligible for a free retake. I spent an afternoon familiarizing myself with the software, getting comfortable with the awkward zoom tool, and getting a sense of the pace of the questions. Like others have said, a lot of the content overlapped with planning, site design, etc, but what allowed me to pass this exam was having a handful of years of experience with and knowledge of construction detailing. Knowing that the content for PPD is similar (I've heard) to PDD, it seems that the test taking order is somewhat arbitrary and could be interchangeable between the two tests.
I also agree that being comfortable with the software is probably your biggest challenge. I took the case studies first, focusing always on the question, and 'putting on the blinders' to non-relevant information (because yes, the PDF's will take forever to load). I spent about 1.5 hours on the case studies, then took my break, then jumped into the MC questions. It's good to flag any questions that require calculations and save for the end--after all, the questions are all weighted the same. I didn't have as much time to review my questions as I had on the 4.0 exams, and you'll be moving along at a pretty quick pace. For questions that I flagged, I mostly stuck with my first instinct after reviewing a second time. So, if you have a solid background of experience to draw from, you could probably spend 4 weeks(?), maybe even less, studying any content you've not encountered at work.
Good luck!