Hit 50 years in drafting and I still use a pencil for first drafts

I hit 50 years in the drafting trade last month. My first drafting table was bought used in 1974. People keep telling me to go fully digital from start to finish, but I start every project with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil and grid paper. Why? Because I catch dimension errors and fit problems before I ever touch a CAD file. Did a full set of plans for a small warehouse in Birmingham this way last spring. Anyone else still rough things out by hand before pulling up the software?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantmartinez27d agoProlific Poster

Saw a documentary a few years back about old school architects and how they'd spot stuff in hand drawings that computers miss. Something about the brain connecting differently when you're physically drawing versus clicking around on a screen. I'm not in the trade myself but it makes sense that you'd catch a dimension error faster when you're the one putting the pencil to paper. My uncle does HVAC blueprints and he still sketches out duct runs on graph paper before opening his software. Says it saves him from redoing whole sections sometimes. Keep doing what works for you, 50 years is proof enough.

alice26926d ago

Oh totally, I read this thing once about how jazz musicians from the 50s would compose whole sections on the back of napkins and the best parts ended up in the final recordings because they worked out the mistakes by hand first. Like my cousin's a drummer and he says when he's counting out rhythms on a table with his fingers it feels totally different than using a metronome app, something about the physical touch locking the beat into his muscles instead of just his eyes. He still leaves sticky notes all over his kit with penciled-in counts for tricky parts, says computers make everything look too clean and he loses the feel. Have you ever caught a typo in something you wrote by hand that you missed on a screen?

sarah_mason14d ago

Wait are we really acting like writing on a napkin makes you a better musician? I've seen plenty of garage bands scratch out riffs on beer coasters and it still sounded like someone dropping a box of forks down the stairs. My cousin's a guitarist and he types his tabs into a phone note app and sounds just as good as any vintage jazz guy. I think people romanticize the struggle of old school methods because it makes them feel more authentic or whatever. Not saying your cousin's wrong for using sticky notes, but I'm pretty sure the final recording matters way more than how you got the skeleton of the idea down.