Topic Title

Was just trolling through some old posts and thought I'd update the topic;

I'm still using the Prov Draftsman as my house-font for most construction drawings and increasingly in Sketch-Up's Layout 2015. One annoyance is that Prov Draftsman doesn't have the degree-sign, so I sometimes will do the angular dimension and bearings in Datacad-font. Though I've found that Datacad is a better font in Sketch-Up 2015-itself, something about how it renders... For tileblocks and drwg/detail titles in SU Layout I have started using Heavyhand.ttf. However in Datacad it just renders looking like Tekton Heavy, so I stick-with Prov Draftsman. Must be something about the drivers; in Datacad it loses that stroke-width delicacy that it has in SU documents.

For large blocks of text in construction drawings and for pages of specifications are typically still rendered in Goudy Oldstyle ATT, It's clean-looking and the serifs are better for long blocks of text, plus part-numbers and product/mfrs. are unambiguous. One trend is that I've shifted up one-or-two-sizes in my font-heights/points for my std. 11x17" construction and design presentations. The same is true for e-mails, I can barely-read the small typefonts that it defaults-to.

The one major change in the last 9-years (Gods has it been THAT long?) is that I use F25 Executive 10-pt or 12-pt for most business correspondence, invoices and billing, and especially project memos. It has a slightly "furry" typewriter-quality that appeals to my inner pencil and tracing-paper Luddite. For internal document with a lot of text where I want to conserve injet-ink, I use Apple Garamond Light at 12-pt. or 14-pt. in the printer's 300-dpi draft-mode. Garamond Light is one of the most ink-efficient fonts for conserving ink per page of text.

One procedural change is that I print almost everything-out using a 3rd-party PDFill PDF Writer before I printing to paper; both for correspondence and for presentation/construction documentation. This-way I have a digital record of EXACTLY what the document looked-like when it left my office, plus I can then e-mail it as an attachment. I find this lets me cut-down on the paper "record copies" filling my filing cabinets since I can always look at it on .pdf, or re-print it out exactly as it left the office weeks or months before. THe PDFill Tools utility also let me recombine the individual pages of construction drawings or presentation sketches into a single .pdf-file for e-mailing, printing and archiving.

I used TTF for everything. Graphite LT is my architectural font of choice for text and dimensions. It print and reads well.
I can't remember the last time I've noticed a hit in speed with modern computers. My drawings look architectural and I've never received a complaint on the font from a building department or my builders. My typical drawings set of 5-10 "D" size sheets loaded with TTF, Images, line weight and hatch rarely run over 5-6 MB when printed to PDF.

As far as Nick's blanket statement "TTFs are a total waste of time, to the point where their use may be deemed unprofessional, the sort of things that may appeal to old Mackinwankers" I call BS on that.

Residential drawings are much more than constructions drawings. They are often used to market homes pre or during construction. Graphic quality counts...line weights, hatch and fonts add to the perception of quality.

Robert

Definitely agree about the "quality-look" being a business necessity for residential work. Especially when dealing with "civilians" outside of the building trades.

Conversely, I've been appalled for years about the crappy sets of construction drawings that I occasionally see from other architects and engineers; all default settings, crappy .shx-fonts and no personal style at all. In part it's laziness, part hiring poorly-trained wonks from the Autocad training-mills like DeVry, and part a decline in professional standards. I've been of the opinion since the 1980s that "architects" and "draftsmen" should learn to draw manually on paper first before learning CAD; from either one of Frank Ching's book's on design graphics or better the old French's Drafting book. No-one knows how to design and THINK using an pencil and sketch-paper anymore. Or-the-Gods-fortend the importance of lineweights and overshoot. The mere-presence of "overshoot" in Datacad from the beginning signaled it was for architects to my mind -- and was one of the reasons I bought my first copy over 20 (25?) years ago. Being a traditionalist who learnd from French's, I remember being at my first Autocad seminar back in the late 1980's and asking about "overshoots" for the final plots, and being looked-at like I had suddenly sprouted a unicorn's horn out of my forehead. ...Two pen-weights and Simplex-shx fonts, **argh**.

And Sketch-Up and Layout are a godsend. It so-much easier to explain a concept on-paper when the client can see it in 3D. "Civilians" aren't trained to see floor-plan-elevation-and-section. More appallingly, too many younger architects and draftsmen can't see the 3D-concept in their minds based on traditional 2D drawings. (Why are they in the profession? And more importantly why are the ALLOWED to remain in the profession?) I originally bought my first-copy of Sketch-Up out of frustration in trying to explain errors in multiple townhouse-cluster roofs shifting in three-dimensions across the site-plan to supposedly-qualified studio staffers. They just couldn't see their own errors in their minds, and the CAD system is "stupid" -- it doesn't THINK, it just draws what you tell it to. It's just a pencil...