hand drafting as a pro - feasibility

Edwards Finance > CAD Drafting

Q. What do you think about a professional - architect or designer - that still hand draws all his projects? And, can one be financially successful (or efficient) today w/out CAD? BTW, to narrow the focus, let's say small, one or two man office, doing residential & small commercial design rather than, say, skyscrapers.

A. I'm one of those architects who always believed in hand drafting and resisted learning cad...until about 7 years ago. I still believe in the importance of hand drawing and sketching for any designer or architect ....because the hand simply thinks differently than the keyboard or mouse. For this reason I believe, for instance, that architecture students should begin with hand drawing skills before they learn cad ...but that they MUST learn cad before they graduate ...otherwise they will be deprived of an important set of tools that are at the foundation of most architectural practice today. Before I explain the importance of Cad for an architect.... I should say that I am aware of a few very good architects who produce all their work by hand. The last time my office produced a completely hand-drafted set of drawings for a project was in 1997 ... a small eco-tourism hotel on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. My office was already producing autocad drawings, but for some reason I decided to do the hotel by hand....I think it was because I wanted to do it myself and I had no intention of learning cad. In theory, there is no reason why an architect cannot produce a perfectly fine set of drawings for a wondeful work of architecture by hand. However, there are some significant disadvantages to a purely hand-based practice: 1. Most consulting engineers use cad, which means that they need an architectural plan in cad to use as the "background" for their work. It is best if the architect prepares this plan. 2. A more important point is that drawing by computer makes it MUCH easier to prepare a set of accurate and coordinated drawings. I assume that most architects work the same way we do... we draw everything on one file, which we refer to as the "plan x-ref" or something similar. That way we can coordinate all pieces of the building, with absolute accuracy. Through the magic of "model space" we draw the whole thing to real size. Then, through the beauty of "paper space" we can generate many different "drawings" of details or sections, etc. without re-drawing them. In the old days, each "drawing" was done separately, often by different people, which created the danger of disagreement among the drawings...this is not possible if everything is in one file. Now some people may worry about the "machine-like" dangers of computer drafting....but in fact...in the old system, it was the people who were treated as mere machines. Today it is the machine that acts like a machine, letting the human be an architect. 3. Another beauty of cad is the ability to develop multiple copies of a plan in order to produce alternates or variations. This is very difficult with hand drawing but it is easy by computer. For the same reason, I do all my writing on a computer, because of the ease of editing and producing variations. 4. Making changes to a computer-generated drawing is MUCH easier than doing the same thing by hand !!!!! I remember back in the late 70s when we were doing the drawings for a hotel in the Galleria/Post Oak section of Houston designed by I.M. Pei. We were still drawing on vellum, although mylar was beginning to enter the office. The first floor plan, with its lobbies and restaurant and bar and kitchens and convention facilities, etc ...was constantly being revised. At one point the vellum had simply become too thin due to all the erasing....and it began to fall apart! (it wasn't helped by the cup of coffee spilled by my old friend Nils Sefeldt!!! ...hey Neil....where are you??!!) Anyway ....even with mylar, constant changes take a toll on hand drawings. ...but with a computer it's a breeze. 5. Finally, you mention the size of a building. Naturally, a very large building is obviously easier to draw by cad, but cad is every bit as critical for a small project and a small office. Actually, the first time I wished that I knew cad was in 1984, when we were producing several high-rise towers in the NYC office of Helmut Jahn. Although I knew nothing about cad at the time, it was clear to me that the drawings we were developing would have been much easier with a computer..... shifting geometries as you go up the building while maintaining stair and elevator shafts, etc. ...variations on a set of themes...which is easy by computer. However, now that I have a tiny practice in San Antonio, I find that cad is even MORE important! I can produce much more work by myself ...with complete drawings and specs....than I could ever have done by hand! So if anything, cad is more important for the small firm.

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