Appreciation post: A retired drafter set me straight on hand sketching

I had coffee with an older guy last week, a retired mechanical drafter who worked at a shipyard in Norfolk for 30 years. He saw me doodling on a napkin and started talking about how he used to do all his initial concepts by hand before touching a computer. He said something like 'you kids jump straight to CAD and skip the thinking that happens with a pencil.' That really hit me because I realized I've been doing the same thing for years, just rushing into software without roughing out ideas first. Since then I've started keeping a small sketchbook at my desk and make myself draw out the main views before I open up AutoCAD. Has anyone else found that hand sketching helps them catch design issues earlier?

2 comments

2 Comments

kellyr1826d ago

Three decades in a shipyard would make anyone pretty set in their ways, honestly. I wouldn't take that napkin lecture too seriously, some old timers just like to gatekeep how things "should" be done.

benwilliams26d ago

Wait, didn't @kellyr18 say the napkin lecture was a bad thing? I think there's a misunderstanding here. The old timer wasn't gatekeeping, he was actually trying to help by explaining why the blueprints had to be written in pencil... something about the metal shifting in the cold water docks and whatnot. That napkin explanation probably saved that new guy a lot of headaches down the line.