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Wednesday, March 9, 2016

A simpler time right?




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been a draftsman since 1985. Spent about 4 years on the board, manually drafting lighting, power, HVAC and plumbing on 24x36 vellum with lead holders and pens. Still have the Leroy lettering set, triangles, plumbing templates and tools from those days.

It was a good workout. Standing over your work, being careful not to smear your lines. Just thinking about it makes the small of my back ache - Wow!

Drafting was a craft back then. You could often pick out who did the work just by the style of hand lettering.

Now its done by computer and printers. The operator still has to tell the computer where the lines go and type the information on what materials are used, how they are fastened and the dimensions. But the actual craft of the final product is sterile - no personality, no art.

Anonymous said...

True enough. The printer that have evolved since the popularity of auto cad, are nothing short of technological miracles. Most of these (Kip being most popular) print on 36" wide paper and start at around $40k. There are color wide format printers available too now. HP makes some reasonably price wide formats, but the ink is where you get stiffed. The Kip color printer starts at over $100k. Most have automatic cutting blades, but some of the older ones have manual cutters. Any type of architectural or engineering firm will have one of these expensive printers. Some print 4 D prints a minute (36x48), others will print 12 per minute. These printers are basically wide copiers. Oh and they can scan up to 36" wide originals as well.
The lost art of drafting. It's still out there. My oldest son took a drafting course in high school just a few years ago (he's 20).

Anonymous said...

Anon from above here - our 1st printer (called it R2D2) held a single ink pen. You had to freeze all the Autocad layers but for layer 1 and print that color. Then switch pens, freeze all layer except for layer 2 and print again. Same for layers 3,4,5 and so on. Printing a single page took about an hour, depending how many line widths there were in the drawing.

Kip will now print off the entire sheet before you can walk from your computer to the printer. Definite progress !

STxAR said...

I took drafting in college, it was a tough class, 0700 - 0930 twice a week. We had a laser disk player for the lecture, and a TA for the on hands teaching.

My writing improved dramatically after that class. I was amazed at finding the true length of an element just by making a couple views of it. Much fun in remembering, not so much in the doing!!

I just made up a kit several months ago to draw some of the project ideas I have.

Good memories.