Topic Title

UP ON MY SOAPBOX ...

WHY does it not matter to anyone any more to draw things right the FIRST TIME.

WHY does it not matter to anyone any more to show EVERYTHING that is existing **CORRECTLY** the FIRST TIME.

WHY do I need to pay someone top dollar to measure and cadd in things that are INCORRECT and then **I** have to somehow figure out what **REALLY** is correct based on what I can interpolate from Google Earth/Maps and Bing Maps?

WHY can't I charge back to them the amount of time that **I** had to take to make it RIGHT when I **PAID** them for a professional job?

WHY don't they acknowledge their responsibility and say "Whatever it takes, I'm going to make it right for you NOW, and you'll get it TOMORROW!"

WHY can't I CLONE myself, or - more accurately - what was I taught as a young hand-drafter that so few are now being taught about being **ACCURATE** every time?

(Sidebar story ...
A (very wise, very knowledgeable) architect that I was working for (when I was a young **HAND** drafter) asked me to lay out a pie-shaped residential lot that he had designed a house to hug the setbacks on. Dutifully I got my trusty adjustable triangle and started laying out the site. I was almost done when he asked me how I had laid it out.

He listened intently to me as I told him how I had done my best to adjust my triangle to show the minutes and seconds on the metes and bounds, and then he asked me if I knew how to do it via trigonometry. Reluctantly I told him "No".

What he then showed me was how to **CORRECTLY** lay out a site mathematically (via "X/Y" points) based on the metes and bounds. He asked me to re-layout the site based on what he shown me and to show me the results when I was done. Thinking that I was "that good", I dutifully laid out the property lines HIS way and found that my "adjustable triangle" way was almost 6 feet off from where it **should** have been.

A couple of years later I was working for another firm when I received a call from a surveyor who was setting building corners at a 40-acre, triangular apartment job site based on dimensions that a previous (fired) drafter had laid out. As the lead drafter in the 6-person firm, my first thought was to re-lay it out via trig per my previous experience. This was still during the hand-drafting days, and I got out my trusty calculator and started with a fresh sheet of velum.

When I was finished I was horrified to find that the other drafter had made the same mistake I'd made a few years before ... but where I'd been working with a 1/4 acre site he'd done it to a 40-acre site!!!! :-0 At the worst end of his dimensions, they were **40 FEET** off!!!

It took me almost 24 hours of re-laying out the site mathematically and re-adjusting the dimensions to make it work. Once I sent it off to the surveyor I never heard a peep about the dimensions being wrong.
End of sidebar story).

**WHY AREN'T WE INSTILLING THIS INTO THE CURRENT NEWLY LICENSED/UNLICENSED DRAFTERS**

AND ... why do we, as the "old guys" **and as their employers**, **ACCEPT** this without firing them!

Our beloved architectural profession is in SERIOUS trouble if this is what the majority our profession is producing **even now**, almost 30 years after my above story!!!

OFF OF MY SOAPBOX ... and looking for a stiff drink!

Nicely put. I am a associates degree graduate of a technical college. I have been working for an architect for 11 years now. We have had several interns from architectural colleges and most of them have had no idea how to create an "accurate" drawing. I as talked to them and asked them about there education and coarses, one thing I learned was that there was NO drafting class. The school puts this on the architect that hires them as an intern. The colleges don't focas on the technical side of profession because they are "affraid" this will kill the creative spirit and limit their designs. Well at some point you have to learn how to build it. It can look beautiful on paper, but if no one can build it, what good is the design? The interns that haven't learned the cost associated with not doing drawings accurate, the cost of time to do it over and the cost to the owner.

That would not by an architectural collage, that would be art collage.

UP ON MY SOAPBOX ...


(Sidebar story ...
A (very wise, very knowledgeable) architect that I was working for (when I was a young **HAND** drafter) asked me to lay out a pie-shaped residential lot that he had designed a house to hug the setbacks on. Dutifully I got my trusty adjustable triangle and started laying out the site. I was almost done when he asked me how I had laid it out.

He listened intently to me as I told him how I had done my best to adjust my triangle to show the minutes and seconds on the metes and bounds, and then he asked me if I knew how to do it via trigonometry. Reluctantly I told him "No".

What he then showed me was how to **CORRECTLY** lay out a site mathematically (via "X/Y" points) based on the metes and bounds. He asked me to re-layout the site based on what he shown me and to show me the results when I was done. Thinking that I was "that good", I dutifully laid out the property lines HIS way and found that my "adjustable triangle" way was almost 6 feet off from where it **should** have been.

In your sidebar story you had a "very wise, very knowledgeable architect" showed you how to do it correctly. So my question is, are you now showing your interns how to do it correctly and passing on the knowledge you received from this wise architect? After all it would seem that you did not learn it from school either.

Absolutely, Paul. It does me no good to withhold knowledge from others - it only hurts me and not them.

I recently had to show a Dcad drafter how to lay out a site using metes and bounds - she had never had to worry about doing one (until she helped me out on a project).

And DataCad makes this simple as ∏

That is why after 16 years I am still a one man office! Tired of paying others to do work that I have to redue. Easyer just to do it correct the first time. I think the hand drafting is the key here. Students from my same Votec and same instructor still have no clue beyound that is the way A??? did it!! They just learn a program any more then you have to teach them standards and what they are drawing!

That is all so why I still use DataCad to do my work! While I have had classes on Revit and bought Chief Architect! They still do not do it correctly! When was taking Revit course the door on brick veneer wall asembally was hinged on out side of brick?????

A programer and team that wants to get it correct like DataCad priceless!!!!!!!............... Yes David that means you are priceless!!! That and ten dollars will buy you a cup of coffee these days.

I"m enough of a dinosaur that I firmly believe that the Architecture Schools should require manual drafting FIRST before students learn CAD...and they should be taught practical drafting a'la Thomas French, not just Frank Ching-lite. My architecture department shipped us off to TWO semesters of manual drafting in the Civil Engineering department if you didn't have practical drafting experience already, or several years of Mechanical Drawing in High School. I still have my copy of French for reference. The head of Architectural Instruction insisted that we have practical work skills BEFORE we graduated, and we had to submit all of our projects in-ink-on-paper.

When I was head of studio of a mid-sized architects' practice in the early 90's we had 30-minutes of technical lettering practice first-thing every morning for several months when things started to get sloppy...even the partners. (Pencil on mylar in those days.) We insisted on drafting legibility and reminded everyone that the drawing is telling a story, if it doesn't add to telling the story, don't draw it. If you can say it in a note, don't spend 30-mins drawing in elaborate details that no-one notices or cares about.

The flip side is that I've seen CAD and hand-drawn "construction documentation" issued by Registered Architects for permits, bidding and construction that I wouldn't let out of my office as "preliminary schematics"; few dimensions, no notes or details, no coordination of drawings or even a decent building section....and they charged twice my customary fees for them.