Old timer told me to hand draw my section details and I think he was right

Back when I started drafting at a small firm in Columbus, this senior guy named Pete kept telling me to sketch out my section details by hand before touching CAD. I thought he was just being old school and stubborn, you know? So I ignored him for like 2 years and went straight to modeling everything. Turns out I was missing all sorts of weird intersections and hidden framing issues that only showed up when I actually drew them out first. After I redid a full staircase section three times because I didnt catch a header conflict, I finally gave his method a shot. Now I spend maybe 20 minutes sketching the tricky parts on graph paper before I even open the software. It feels wasteful at first but it cuts down my revision time by a lot. Has anyone else had an older drafter push a manual trick on them that actually worked?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew723d ago

I mean, I get where he's coming from but for me that's always felt like an extra step that just slows me down. Once you know the building logic well enough, jumping straight into CAD forces you to think through the problems in real time which is how I learn the details better anyway. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather catch and fix things as I model than spend 20 minutes on graph paper before I've even started.

campbell.nora23d ago

The "20 minutes on graph paper" part is what gets me. That's the part that's a bit off, I think. If you're taking a full 20 minutes to sketch out a simple detail, you're probably overcomplicating the sketch or you're still learning the building logic. A good sketch isn't a full set of plans, it's just a few quick lines and notes to lock in your approach before you start clicking. It's more about preventing a big redo than it is about being slow.

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