Post off topic threads here.
#75256 by Ted B
Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:29 pm
While CAD has so-many advantages, it's taken much of the "art" and the "craft" out of drafting. There's little finesse or style in most most CAD-drafters' work today, and little concern for the printed page anymore. People forget that Drafting used to be a parallel and separate honored profession to Architecture and Engineering.

I'll admit that one of the petty reasons I first was attracted to Datacad was the "overshoots" and the availability of different line-weights on the same layer compared-to Autocad in the very-early days. I used to attend CAD demos and bring-up "overshoots", and they'd look at me like I was a Unicorn. Most CAD drawings were so crude graphically, even though they were clean, neat and correctable. And plotters could only support a few pen-weights via inserting different-weight steel-tipped pens or felt-markers.

I learned to draft in the early-70s in pencil on vellum with French & Vierch on the drawing board. And in architecture school we had to present ink-drawings on 18" yellow-trace or 24x36" drafting-vellum in the original; no blueprints, no engineering copier. And clear freehand sketching on yellow-trace with a marker of a 'sign-pen' was a developed art. And you hand-lettered everything -- or used the LeRoy lettering machine -- in India Ink. If you were an Architecture major, you got shipped-off to the Civil Engineering Department for one or two semesters of "proper" drafting instruction with the civil engineering geeks.

Now it's all crap. I'm embarrassed for the profession when I get drawings from an engineer or another architect. Total computer-drawn crap.
- No line-weights, no visual contrasts.
- No clear dimensions or arrows -- with lots of dimensions missing. (Don't Scale off the Drawing!!)
- Crappy cross-hatching out of laziness.
- Poor or unimaginative fonts, or variety in font-size by class-of-text; Title, body-text, dimensions, labels, etc
- "Professional Drawings" created using the default-settings and the simplex.SHX font.
Mindless drivel... Crap... Cut-and-paste garbage... Dreck...

[/steps off soapbox]
#75257 by jimgoodman
Wed Nov 28, 2018 7:43 pm
Well said Ted

I just terminated our arrangement with a young architectural firm that was helping us out because they didn't understand why a concrete block hatch pattern on an elevation needed to be scaled accurately and with the proper block coursing origin point, among other things.

These guys are AutoCAD users, so another reason to get rid of them....
#75263 by MtnArch
Thu Nov 29, 2018 10:37 am
It's what happens when you let the engineers drive the boat ...
#75264 by Neil Blanchard
Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:08 am
Ted - I am with you on this. I was trained in manual drafting just when CADD was coming out. My first job is a architectural office, had just gotten two SKOK cad work stations that cost about $100K EACH.

But, please explain what TPTB is, please?
#75265 by joshhuggins
Thu Nov 29, 2018 2:00 pm
Neil Blanchard wrote:TPTB is, please?
The Powers That Be :wink: One of my previous bosses favorite lines :roll:
#75267 by Ted B
Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:13 am
The first CAD system we looked-at in the late 1980s was an amazing machine, impressive as hell, but frightenly expensive. I think it was from the old Bentley Systems, it ran off a mini-mainframe computer the size of a small refrigerator from DEC, and had two monitors and a huge 48x36" digitizer-desk biult into the console. It looked like it came from Mission Control at Canaveral, ...for $125k, plus training and $18k/yr. plus expenses in maintenance. And we'd still need to buy a $20k pen-plotter. And we almost bought it...

Just then the first PC-based Autocad stations came on the market. A HP 386 tower, a separate 387 math card as expensive as the PC, and a graphics card that cost as much as the PC and math card combined. With the 12x12" digitizer, the puck and 21" CRT I think it was over $12k...

BUT... What sold the then-partners on the potential of CAD was this amazing set for a 12-story office bldg. we saw at an on-site demo in Annapolis for Bentley, an 18x24" half-size in portrait...AND IT WAS IN COLOR!! It was beautiful, all the disciplines and engineering separated and color-coded, every line crisp and sharp, every letter prefect. It was compact, printed on both-sides and you didn't need a conf. table to read it on. You could read it like a newspaper on the train. Today it wouldn't raise more than an eyebrow, but 30-years ago it was like it had fallen from a flying saucer

I kicked myself for not pinching-it on the way out. It had been printed on a color pen-plotter then separated for CMYK litho' offset on good paper. It must have cost a fortune....

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