Topic Title

I may be an "ol' fogey" at 46, but I STILL say that Architects should be trained in hand-drafting BEFORE they're allowed to turn-in design work done on CAD. Not necessarily the pen-and-ink stuff, but they should get an organic feel for pencil-drawn work and understand how elevations are "thrown". And damned-few seem to understand sections. They need to learn to think with the end of a pencil or marker on a roll of yellow-trace....

As part of my practice, I review other Architect's work for Builders or Lawyers involved in mergers and aquisitions of pending-projects; and too-often their actual drawings SUCK..... No line-weights; Too-large or too-small lettering in "clever" fonts; Incorrect spatial relations between adjacent elevations; Improper use of "white space" and inappropriate levels of line-work detailing; Improper use of symbols and a total-lack of cross-referencing.

I'm seeing way too-much reliance on trade-school CAD graduates to replace trained Architects, and way too-many "Architects" who do not see their design work and construction drawings in 3-D in their heads. They now rely on the technology, and make obvious mistakes through their inability to integrate mentally what they are seeing on the boards or on their screens.

Grrrrrrrr....

I totally agree!!!

This is a topic that was discussed to quite some extent a few years back on the DBUG forum. I would love to see it get fired up again ... if nothing else, just to have a good reference to point to, so that just maybe some of the people that do drawings that **I** have to work on realize HOW IMPORTANT it is to do ACCURATE, ORGANIZED, QUALITY cad and drafting work ... and how much faster, easier, and more efficiently things can be done if working in that manner as opposed to having to deal with sloppy and inaccurately drawn information.

I may be an "ol' fogey" at 46, but I STILL say that Architects should be trained in hand-drafting BEFORE they're allowed to turn-in design work done on CAD. Not necessarily the pen-and-ink stuff, but they should get an organic feel for pencil-drawn work and understand how elevations are "thrown". And damned-few seem to understand sections. They need to learn to think with the end of a pencil or marker on a roll of yellow-trace....

As part of my practice, and too-often their actual drawings SUCK..... No line-weights; Too-large or too-small lettering in "clever" fonts; Incorrect spatial relations between adjacent elevations; Improper use of "white space" and inappropriate levels of line-work detailing; Improper use of symbols and a total-lack of cross-referencing.

I'm seeing way too-much reliance on trade-school CAD graduates to replace trained Architects, and way too-many "Architects" who do not see their design work and construction drawings in 3-D in their heads. They now rely on the technology, and make obvious mistakes through their inability to integrate mentally what they are seeing on the boards or on their screens.

I totally agree!!!

This is a topic that was discussed to quite some extent a few years back on the DBUG forum. I would love to see it get fired up again ... if nothing else, just to have a good reference to point to, so that just maybe some of the people that do drawings that **I** have to work on realize HOW IMPORTANT it is to do ACCURATE, ORGANIZED, QUALITY cad and drafting work ... and how much faster, easier, and more efficiently things can be done if working in that manner as opposed to having to deal with sloppy and inaccurately drawn information.

This is utter baloney. All of the above alludes to bad training. It is just as easy to train somebody badly using a pencil as it is to train somebody badly using CAD - indeed possibly easier. And as for "trade-school CAD graduates to replacing trained Architects, and way too-many "Architects" who do not see their design work and construction drawings in 3-D in their heads. ", you are either an architect or you are not, and the inability of architects to visualise in 3D has been a problem ever since architects first learned to draw in 2D, it is also a problem that is surely more easily fixed now that we have 3D CAD.

An person doing sloppy work on the boards would never be an architect and only be an architectural draftsperson for so long before getting the axe. I've seen very few old school board drafters that would have tolerated the crap that the average CAD drafter vomits forth today. Yes, some of it does have to do with training. I recently worked with an architect in Fresno that hated CAD because none of the drafters could produce the look of his hand drafted stuff. Incidentally, he actually intermeshed his hand drafted with CAD, wanted ALL text to be EXACTLY like a Leroy lettering device, and didn't have a single detail drawn in CAD. He also complained that he "used to buy a bottle of ink for $1.95 and it lasted for months, now I pay $50 every few weeks for print cartridges". He needed to be trained on CAD (as well as his CAD people!) The other two draftmen had no real clue of how CAD works, they just did redlines. (BTW, one of the drafters was 60ish, and one of the most terrifying things you could ever see was him pulling out his calculator to figure out how much he had to enlarge or reduce something. Think .99837's & .74295).

Once you get it through the heads of most architects that you CAN control how your linework looks it starts raising THEIR expectations. CAD has progressed a long way from the 8 lines & 6 hatches it started with. This of course will make you the most unpopular individual among the draftsmen, but, OH WELL.

Ted B. wrote:

I'm seeing way too-much reliance on trade-school CAD graduates to replace trained Architects, and way too-many "Architects" who do not see their design work and construction drawings in 3-D in their heads. They now rely on the technology, and make obvious mistakes through their inability to integrate mentally what they are seeing on the boards or on their screens.

"Draftsman" are becoming a endangered species in this computer aided world. Back in the day "Draftsman" was consider a skilled trade. The drawings that was produce was a thing of beauty; but technically correct. I was trained on the board before CAD became the norm. We had to know about proportions, geometry, physics and most especially lettering. There are plenty of CAD operators on this plant and some of them can actually draw what they see. Nick P. is right about "bad training" but take it one step further, they are not teaching CAD operators - drafting. Just because some of them can draw pretty pictures and know the difference between x-ref's and model spaces does not make them draftsman.

There are more and more competition in the CAD world for a CAD operators but if you have a "Draftsman" on your team you better keep them.

I couldn't agree with everyone more. I went to a tech college for Architecture and they don't allow any CAD work until the second semester. Line weights and drawings space need to be taught with pencil and pen. I don't think the school has changed it's format.

I actually feel quite fortunate that most of my schooling was on the board, learning not only how to design, but also how to do the technical things like laying out and balancing sheet composition, providing adequate amounts of white space, using appropriate spatial relationships between drawing elements, and using line weights properly. All of this boils down to producing clear, professional looking information.

I was introduced to cad, still more or less in its infancy, in a one-semester computer class. At the time, there were no computers in the design studios, and very few people used the ones in the computer lab beyond the requirements for that one class. Three or four of us, including myself, were actually quite interested in the potential that we saw for the computer, so spent a lot more time playing with it. One of the professors told us that it was good that we had an interest in the computer, because he was certain that eventually, all of the drawings done by architects would be generated by them.

Even my first job, for the first year out of college, was spent on the board, using pens and ink, and doing Leroy lettering. Again, I saw that as good training for the cad work that I now do.

By the time I started using cad in the office, it just came naturally as an easier, quicker, more consistent way to produce the work. Since I am one of those organized, perfectionist types, it seemed that using the computer made even more sense in helping to maintain that consistent, organized, and overall high quality output.

One of "my" general contractors just showed me a set of drawings that he recieved from another Architect for a semi-custom house that we both bid-on. The drawings are such !CRAP! from an informational standpoint; no line-weights at-all, no cross-referencing, no building-sections nor details...and the final price was higher than my original quote. They looked like they had been drawn by someone just out of CAD trade school...with little architectural background. (I think he farmed-out the drawings to some local "kid".)

I need to raise my prices....

His set was (6) 11X17" sheets with lot's of "white-space"; mine for a project of the same magnitude would have been 25-35 sheets with details, full structurals and MPE layouts, outline specifications and full schedules....and I usually have 3D renderings to go-with. His was barely what I deliver as preliminaries. And the project info on area and volume were incorrect...and there's a lot of questions that the contractor is going to have to answer for the building inspector's review. Little on the floor plans was labeled or identified, and the elevations were nearly devoid of labels, notes or annotation. They were drawn with just one line-weight, and all "solid line". ....Oh, and it took him almost 12-months to finally deliver the completed drawings to the client. And the client had provided the conceptual sketches initially.

That a Registered Architect would deliver to a client what I would consider "very-thin" set of Preliminary Constrcution Documents as "Permit-Issue" really pisses-me-off...and it reflects poorly on the profession.

Unfortunately, that is not an isolated incident. The quality and professionalism of Architecture is eroding away at an alarming rate. Worse, is the ambivalence that the average drafter/designer/archBLECH has towards their work. It not only makes me sick, it makes me want to find another profession.