Hot take: Is hand drafting really better than CAD for learning the trade?

I got into it with my coworker Dave last week at lunch. He's been drafting for like 30 years, started on a board with pencils and triangles. I'm pretty much CAD born and raised. He was saying that everyone should spend at least 6 months doing manual drafting before touching software. That you don't really understand line weights or why dimensions go where they do unless you drew it by hand first. I kinda laughed it off at first, but then I thought about it later. I do mess up layout stuff sometimes because I just rely on the snap tools and copy-paste. But at the same time, nobody at my firm has time to hand draft anything. We use Revit and AutoCAD every day. So is it really worth learning old school methods, or is that just boomer talk? Who here learned on a board and does it actually make you better? Or did you jump straight to CAD and feel like you missed something?

2 comments

2 Comments

dixon.ryan1mo ago

I think about that "you don't really understand line weights" thing a lot, because I learned CAD first and honestly my line weights are still a mess sometimes. I had a drawing come back from a senior guy once where he just circled every single line and wrote "what is this supposed to be?" in red. That stung. But at the same time, I've never actually drawn anything by hand that wasn't a quick sketch on a napkin, so I have no idea if manual drafting would have fixed that or if I'm just bad at it naturally. My point is, Dave is probably right that it helps you understand the theory better, but in a real office nobody has time to teach you that way. I just try to look at old hand drafted drawings online and copy how they do things. Works okay for me, but I'm still mostly faking it.

veraw471mo ago

That comment from your senior guy must have been brutal, @dixon.ryan. But honestly, I wonder if copying old hand-drawn stuff is actually the best way to learn line weights anyway. Have you ever tried printing out a simple plan and tracing over it with different pens just to feel out the hierarchy?