We have had AI so how about VR?

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Moreover, I note increasingly that whilst new young architects and engineers are dab hands at creating 3D models they don't know what sections they should be preparing and checking. And what typical details and checks will cause issues. Which is where I come in and it is truly mind boggling what sh÷te they can produce at times from large practices paid millions in design fees

I feel very fortunate to have been just the right age to have been taught both traditional technical drawing, and CAD in secondary school technology classes...

Understanding how to lay out a print/drawing/section to be easily read and unambiguously understood is a distinct skill, which demands a certain amount of graphic-design thinking, but that's not emphasised during the (typically brief) CAD classes taught as part of the engineering curriculums in colleges and universities.



About 6 years ago, I was running a small, urgent modification project for a site in Scotland and at the time my employer was having licence issues with the company wide CAD package.

Not wanting to delay I drew a bunch of pipe iso's by hand, got them scanned and sheepishly emailed them to the pipefitting contractors, apologising for the hand drawings.

The shop foreman from that contractor rang me about half an hour later to say:

"Ah dinnae ken fit wye ye saying sorry, aat s the clearest we hiv seen a lang time"

Once I adjusted my ears to Doric, we had quite a nice conversation, where he lamented how often they got poorly documented 3D models, or overly busy orthographic drawings of everything in a pipe rack, which he then had to interpret into something clear for whoever was tasked with making it.

 

[Red'n'Black]

I feel very fortunate to have been just the right age to have been taught both traditional technical drawing, and CAD in secondary school technology classes...

Understanding how to lay out a print/drawing/section to be easily read and unambiguously understood is a distinct skill, which demands a certain amount of graphic-design thinking, but that's not emphasised during the (typically brief) CAD classes taught as part of the engineering curriculums in colleges and universities.



About 6 years ago, I was running a small, urgent modification project for a site in Scotland and at the time my employer was having licence issues with the company wide CAD package.

Not wanting to delay I drew a bunch of pipe iso's by hand, got them scanned and sheepishly emailed them to the pipefitting contractors, apologising for the hand drawings.

The shop foreman from that contractor rang me about half an hour later to say:

"Ah dinnae ken fit wye ye saying sorry, aat s the clearest we hiv seen a lang time"

Once I adjusted my ears to Doric, we had quite a nice conversation, where he lamented how often they got poorly documented 3D models, or overly busy orthographic drawings of everything in a pipe rack, which he then had to interpret into something clear for whoever was tasked with making it.

It's the same story with electronic design. I've worked with a few people who think as long as all the parts are connected up and you can move on to the next stage of making a PCB from it, it's all good. Never mind the poor sod in Service who has to read it in a few years' time.

I sent one design back with eight pages of snag list, the guy argued the toss on all of them. He doesn't work for us any more, funnily enough.

Old schematics from the likes of HP and Tektronix, when they used to publish them, were works of art. Making them neat and readable doesn't even take that much effort.