Where have the drafting classes gone? 1

[DemarEngr]

Another thread got me thinking about this.

Where have all the drafting classes gone to?
They are plenty of classes out there where you can learn how to use AutoCAD, but I have noticed that it's almost impossible to find a drafting class short of community college.

I would figure there would be a huge need for this.
Drafting principals seem to be a dying art. Especially simple orthographic drawings.

 

[DRW75]

Although I use autoCAD heavily, and enjoy it greatly, I do enjoy manual drafting as well. When I went through eng school, we did two courses in manual drafting (I really enjoyed these courses), and one in computer drafting (That wasn't that long ago, ~1996-1997). I agree, it is an art, and its always nice to see the old guys crack out the old tools and go to it... but the fact of the matter is that it is too slow mainly when it comes to changes, and there are always changes.

You can always jazz up the AutoCAD drafting with touches of manual by selecting certain fonts, leaving certain construction lines etc... But this isn't a popular thing to do because it adds nothing to the quantity, and hard to justify extra time for aesthetics.

DRW75

 

[btrueblood]

I never took a CAD course, and still use "old fashioned" 2d projection drawing techniques when working on layout sketches in AutoCad. There are certain things you just can't draw in popular 3D solid modelling programs, but can easily create the required drawings for definition of the part in 2D. That said, 3D solid modelling can sure cut down on the time to design complex assemblies, if used thoughtfully.

 

[LHA]

I had to take a hand drafting course to get my BS in engineering. If I had I not been required to, I would have taken AutoCAD instead. I understand Penn State (my alma) now allows you to choose. Good move, hand drafting is not a marketable skill.

Hand sketching is indispensible for design engineering. But no course can teach that, you just pick it up. I consider a hand drafted project to be only half done, It still has to redone in CADD to be of any applicable use. Clients want an electronic reproduction of what they've just paid you for, and who can blame them? What are they gonna do with a bunch of Mylars with ink lines? Most review agencies here make approval contingent on a written promise of CADD files, and who can blame them? How is a CM or RPR going to check elevations, areas, sizes, distances during the brutal schedule they have to hold? Are they going to scale and trianuglate and calculate sines and tangents all day? Not on my project's budget.

Good riddence hand drafting! Let's hold a Leroy board and pen burning ceremony...french curves make good fire fuel, plastic, high BTU value!

 

[DemarEngr]

Let me rephrase my question, I agree with you lha, good riddence to the manual days. But there were a lot of things taught in the manual days that still need to be taught to the AutoCAD gurus of the world. People just don't make pretty drawings anymore.

Some of my biggest pet peeves, especially when I get drawings from outside sources.

No use of Line Weights
Mutilple text sizes in a drawing.
Different type blocks in the same drawings
Fonts (Don't get me started on this one though)

 

[LHA]

I agree, hand drawn plans were by and large better looking. But there is no added value in an attractive plan, versus an unattractive one. A plan is just a mechanism by which something with value (house, car, nuclear bomb) gets built. You just lay the thing on the hood of your truck and get to work. No one (except maybe the drafter) cares what it looks like, as long as you can apply what is on it.

 

[btrueblood]

I'll disagree on two points.

1.) Hand drafting skills can give you a leg up on hand sketching (sketching was taught as part of my mechanical drawing class in school), and a lot of preliminary design work gets done away from the workstation (e.g. on napkins at the pub, on whiteboards in the boardroom).

2.) Who says an architectural plan view (or even detail views) has to be ugly. My wife has some artwork on the wall of our dining room at home - plan & elevation views of a pedestrian bridge, and some details of dock cranes in London. Granted, both were done ca. 1800's, by hand, and have watercolor wash to add colors...and okay, she's an engineer too. But I've seen some awfully nice mechanical design prints done by drafters, who were typically proud enough of their work to post on their cubicle walls.

 

[LHA]

btrueblood:

1.
Agreed, hand drafting enhances sketching skills. But I have never seen a situation where an engineer couldn't sketch what he or she was thinking, whether or not the engineer was a drafter. From that, I concluded sketching is something which appears to be learned to an adequate level without hand drafting. I maintain that is true.

2.
I didn't say architectural (or any other) plan (or any other) views had to be ugly. I said "...there is no added value in an attractive plan, versus an unattractive one." I maintain that is true.

I didn't say drafters are not typically proud of their work. I said "No one (except maybe the drafter) cares what it looks like..." I also maintain that is true.

 

[FredGarvin]

While I agree that hand sketching is a must have for anyone even remotely involved with engineering, I have to disagree quite strongly with LHA on manual drafting. While it is not time efficient any more to do things on the drafting board, there are too many basic items taught in a drafting class that seem to get glossed over in CAD classes now because they need to teach what the functions of CAD do versus how to do the ABC's of drawing. I think a 50-50 approach is most appropriate. Half on the board, half on the tube.

The number of student interns and new engineers that are coming out that don't understand prints and basic projections to a satisfactory level (don't even get me started on sections) is, IMO, increasing. I used to TA manual drafting classes and labs. I feel that there is something to be said for actually sitting down and drawing something by hand that you don't get in CAD (for beginners). I think it has something to do with the fact that less thought goes into putting a CAD line on a screen than on paper because it's so easy to erase and forget about. When doing it by hand, you get tired real quick with erasing and redrawing, thus more upfront thought. It's just a pet theory of mine. No hard data to back that up.

I also strongly disagree with the notion that prints don't have to look professional as long as they get the point across. Just like anything else I do, one of my prints is a reflection of how I feel about my work. Also, I don't know about you guys, but our managers routinely grab our prints to include in presentations, etc... for upper management and clients.

 

[JStephen]

My local junior college offers an associates degree in drafting/ CAD. I don't know if they teach any hand drafting in that or not. But a lot of that series of courses is going to be oriented towards what to draw and how to draw it. I think that is what you are asking about.

On the other hand, they offered an "AutoCAD for Professionals" course, that was 32 class hours total. It taught you nothing about what to draw, it was just how to use AutoCAD, and assumed you knew what you wanted to draw.

Bad drafting you see is not just a problem with the drafting education. Part of the problem is low expectations on employer's parts. They want to hire people to draft for $8 an hour, then expect professional results.

 

[gmarken]

I agree whole heartedly with FredGarvin's thoughts on the subject. To take it a step further, I once worked with a young Degreed Mechanical Engineer who did not know the difference between a tapped hole and a clearance hole. As far as Drafting he was also clueless. This was at what was then a Fortune 100 company.

 

[haggis]

I'm an old timer who started hand drafting in 1964 then went to CAD quite early in 1984. I can't really say I miss the board at all but the quirks about CAD have been mentioned in the posts. Receiving drawings not properly layered, extensive use of yellow (don't know why) and a multitude of fonts. I drafted up a standard for drawings coming in and find it very difficult to get people to comply. It does get irritating. Going back to manual drafting, you could recognise one's drawing with the penmanship and some were trully artistic. The only thing that I do here, for internal sketches and drawings, I use "handtxt.shx". I find it gives that little personal touch to the drawing and really does look like handwriting.

What is it they say? "You can take the boy out of drafting but you can't take drafting out of the boy"

 

[Cyclefrog]

Ultimately, drafting - either by hand or by CAD program - is all about communicating. Hand drafting forces the student to think about clarity of presentation, while CAD pushes the student towards speed and complexity.

In many ways, it's like the transition from slide rule to calculator. The slide rule required us to have a good idea of the order of magnitude of the result; with calculators it's too easy to accept a wildly incorrect answer.

I wouldn't trade my CAD software for anything, but I also wouldn't trade away the things I learned doing Rapidograph on vellum.

 

[SUNDEMON]

hi-
reading this thread reminds me of when I started in ACAD. I was a cabinetmaker, and wanted to change career when I reached a certain age. To enter the drafting field I took some ACAD courses in continuing education, naively thinking that tech knowledge alone would enable me to get started in my new career.
I have a cousin whose been in product design for many years, and when I told him of my plans, he suggested I take a drafting course, which at the time, I didn't really understand the signifigance of.
Anyway, I learned ACAD, but when I went to work I didn't know the first thing about general architectural/engineering drawing standards, and I had a rough few years picking up that knowledge on the job.
After I was in the field a few years, I got some old out-of-date high school text books on drafting, and I had a new appreciation for the time-tested conventions for clear presentaion.
While there's nothing like a hand drawing in terms of beauty, I didn't interpret the original post as about hand vs. computer drafting, but rather about teaching general drafting standards in schools. As someone stated earlier, it's all about communication. Of the various co-workers I've had, I remember one guy whose drawing style was sort of a dialog with the viewer, calling out the important points to the client, architect, etc. That was a learning experience for me.

sundemon

 

[MESC1]

So glad someone said it... I get so tired of seeing 'designers' who have no concept of scale or paper sizes, much less the general asthetics of fonts, and text size...
The ability to operate a program does not mean you should. The old school drafting ideals could easily be taught in AutoCAD courses, and in some places are, but the trend these days is to train operators, operators don't need to know why they draw, just draw.

And the asthetics of a drawing do change the 'work-ability' that is why those standards were set in place to begin with, it is not simply because then the drawing is pretty, but because it is easier to read. Also, it doesn't take any longer to do it right or more attractive, if you do it right the first time.

Thanks
SC

 

[PlaneNut]

It seems, as I read through the posts, that some people went off a little on a tangent from the basic question... "Where have all the drafting classes gone..."
I see it more and more... people that spend far too much time drawing the details on a part or assembly that you can't even see when they put it on a plotted page at a scale that barely uses a third of a page. I feel that the art of "drafting" is not tied to manual or CAD, it is the presentation of the information on a released document. Manually drafting made you think 10 steps ahead of how, where, and at what scale you were going to put the information. Today all you get is model information and some views "slapped" on some "paper".
The new guys have all told me that they were never taught how to "Draft", only how to use the software. I recommend to them to read through some old drafting textbooks to learn about drafting.

 

[diamondjim]

I started on the board and took several drafting
classes in the 50s and then stated ACAD in 74.
I do agree that the drafting class was invaluable
in knowing how to section some difficult parts.
It was also very helpful to know how to dimension
so stack up of tolerance becomes minimum. Line
weights are important not only aesthetic reasons
but also for clarity. One advantage of ACAD is
that if you share the drawing, the customer can
print at a greater scale if necessary. I know
many have reservations about sharing the actual
drawings, but we all want to save time by importing
components into our assembly drawings. We in
engineering liked to draw to max material conditions
but the shop prefers the mean dimension for their
programming.

 

[DwattedWabbit]

Ultimately, it is a balance between drafters having some idea of WHAT they are drafting, and/or designers/engineers having some idea of HOW they are drafting. If the two work together and talk over design and drafting issues for any given project, the resulting plan will benefit. As a drafter, I have the benefit of having trained and qualified once as a first-class journeyman pipefitter, so I understand diagrams and symbols for various fittings and so forth. The rest has come with drafting experience from working in the same field for 16 years.

Years ago, I worked with a woman who did beautiful hand drafting. Unfortunately, she never gained any sense at all about what the lines and notes on a plan meant. One day, a surveyor gave her a mark-up of a plan drafted a week or so before, and one of the notes was to make a certain solid line a dotted line: "Make this line dotted." with an arrow pointing to it. She dutifully made the changes as shown on the mark-up. The end result included a hand-drafted note on the plan, with an arrow pointing to the line, that read, "Make this line dotted." That surveyor and I have been chuckling over this one ever since.

 

[DRC1]

Drafting is the engineer's primary means of communication.The location of views, the wieght of the lines, how sections are properly cut, carefully showing all dimensions, fabrication markings and schedules was better 25 years ago. Actually if you look at drawings 50- 100 years old, it is amazing how much information could go on one sheet with out clutter. Cadd offers the opertunity for the engineer to detail his work in actual dimensions and resolve all interference problems. However it is not done well by many engineers because it is seen as taking too much time. I have done both types of drafting. Quality hand drafting is just as fast as cadd, if you are good.( I do concede CADD revisions are much faster)
We need to see Cadd as a tool to better model the work, not as a time saving device.
If we had better CADD standards, and enforced these standards, we would have better drawings and less claims against our work.

 

[cscheide]

I am currently teaching a drafting 1/2 course at a High School in Northern California. I have tried teaching just CAD and hand techniques along with cad and the latter works much better. You get draftsmen that understand layout, lineweights etc. much better than someone who is just proficient in CAD. One of the problems I run into w/ teaching CAD is that you can get lost just teaching commands. I am starting to use more hand drafting activites like geometric construction so they understand what the CAD program is doing when they use it.

I would be really interested in knowing what all of you think would be the most useful skills for students who are going into engineering or want to work as draftsmen. My background is Civil/Survey so I have a handle on that but any input is welcom.