Serious question - is there any point to manual dimensioning anymore?

My old drafting instructor, Mr. Petrov, swore I would fail if I relied on auto-dimensions from the CAD tools. He told me last year that 'you have to check every single line by hand or you'll miss something critical.' So I spent 6 months doing that on a renovation project for a downtown library here in Portland. Every dimension double-checked with a scale ruler, all manual notes. You know what happened? The contractor said my drawings were perfect but the structural engineer's auto-dimensioned set had zero errors too. I wasted maybe 40 hours total doing the extra work. Now I'm wondering if that advice is just old-school gatekeeping. Has anyone else felt pressured to do manual checks when the software is just as accurate?

2 comments

2 Comments

dixon.daniel17d agoMost Upvoted

Oh, I learned that lesson the hard way too, spot checks save you time and catch the big stuff.

juliam4017d ago

You ever had that moment where you swear you checked something three times and still missed it? That was me and a thermostat wire last Tuesday.