Hot take: My drafting instructor in Milwaukee made us hand-draw a whole site plan after our CAD crashed.

We were finishing a big project in my second year, and the lab computers went down for like 4 hours right before the deadline. He said 'pencil and vellum, go' and I had to draft a 1/8" scale plan of a 2-acre lot by hand. Do you think forcing that old-school skill is actually useful, or is it just pointless stress now that everything's digital?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenkins.spencer2mo ago

Pencil and vellum, go" is a terrifying sentence. My hand cramps just thinking about it. That forced skill is weirdly useful though, it makes you actually understand the drawing instead of just clicking buttons. My own hand drafting looked like a toddler with a ruler, so I'm Team Digital, but I get the lesson.

thomas8622mo ago

My college architecture final looked like a drunk spider took my pen.

noah13523d ago

and to be honest i see this whole "hand drafting makes you a better architect" thing a little different. i mean yeah you learn to appreciate what goes into a drawing but lets not pretend like a bad hand draft is some deep failure. my buddy hand drafted a building layout and it looked like the columns were having a dance off with the walls. still got an A because the actual design was solid. so maybe its not that serious, sometimes a messy drawing is just a messy drawing and your final idea still works fine when you put it into CAD.