[apappano]

Teachers: How important is it to your student's skill level to have hand drafting taught before they ever touch a computer? I plan to cover almost the first entire quarter using hand drafting skills exclusively before i move to a computer...

Employers: Does having hand drafting skills make a difference in your shop? why? Does it make you more valuable as an employee? How does it hurt you of you don't have it?

[MrWild]

Hand drafting may be slow and even tedious, but it makes the student aware of how blue prints relate through all four views, Top, front, side, isometric. I'm all for it.

[Bubba]

There are times that one does NOT have a computer available and must do field measurements in order to produce a drawing. If one does not have the manual skills, they often leave out important details that are necessary once you get on the cad machine.
Also, I don't know about others, but the hand skills I learned back in school (we didn't have cad), have stood me in good position to make a cad drawing at times.
At other times, I have had cad only employees that couldn't figure out how to make certain types of drawings as they never had to do it "the hard way"!

On the light side, it makes you appreciate that you no longer have erasure marks (holes in the drawing) or smuges when you plot the final drawing.

[PinMan]

When I went through my apprenticeship, I was required to take Drafting classes before I learned CAD. In the last 10 years, I have had to rely on the skills that I learned in those Drafting classes many times!
Sometimes, in CAD, there can be overlooked things that the software might not pick up. Learning the basics teaches you to pay more attention to what you are drawing and notice the details.

Oh yeah, and those damned smudge marks! lol

[Bubba]

As a followup to Pinman, I was (before retirement) in charge of our "drafting" dept.
We usually hired "graduates" of a tech school and the only "drafting" they got was on cad. This caused many problems as they did not understand many of the basics.

IMO they also lacked many skills that I felt were necessary to be productive "in the real world", but got nowhere when this was presented to the educators! (Nuff said on that subject)

[ger21]

If you don't know how to do hand drafting, imo, you can't be a good draftsman. We have CAD guys that think they are really good, but have no idea what a good draftsman really is. If you take a look at the AutoCAD user forum in the drafting section, you'll see a huge number of threads about young people having very poor drafting skills, mainly because they are not taught. I asked one of our CAD guys if he ever had a hand drafting class. He said he had one, and it was the hardest class he had.

[scottishgrant]

Hand draughing is not only a great way to start before progressing to CAD, but its also a great way of developing pride for what you do.

Its also a great discipline that is valuable in teaching our young generation of engineers. I remember well my teacher shouting at me for drawing huge ROBIN HOOD arows and thick black lines!!!

Hopefully its not a dying art, and it continues to be taught for future generations.

Grant, CNC Programmer (age 28)

[jcoats]

As the industry progresses, knowing how, and doing drafting by hand is still important. My college, that was the ONLY way. In the last few years, learning CAD has been a learning curve for me.

For now, IMHO, hand drafting is still VERY important. In time, as much as we don't want to admit it, hand drafting will be less important as time goes by, but it will be many years before someone doesn't need to do a quick design on the back of a napkin at a coffee shop!

Jack, old computer geek, with mech engr in my background. Age 55+

[daedalus]

why is pencil and paper drafting considered important? Im one of those people who never did drafting, i can't produce good drawings without my cad package, but i still get the job done. In my day to day there are very few times that i can't pull out a laptop and model a part, and in the time it would take me to draw a hand sketch well, i can produce a cad model, show a photorealistic render to someone, and hand off the parts. Personally i find hand sketches to be far less reliable, more likely to be error prone than using a cad package, but thats probably due to my experience.

I see drafting as a skill that takes a lot of time to master, and doesnt really give me anything that i dont get from my cad package already (something i needed to learn to use).

[ger21]

why is pencil and paper drafting considered important? Im one of those people who never did drafting, i can't produce good drawings without my cad package, but i still get the job done. In my day to day there are very few times that i can't pull out a laptop and model a part, and in the time it would take me to draw a hand sketch well, i can produce a cad model, show a photorealistic render to someone, and hand off the parts.

I don't think 3D solid modeling is what this topic is about, since you can't do it with a pencil and paper.

I think we're comparing 2D CAD to hand drafting. Most people fluent in 2D CAD, but with no hand drafting experience, will produce very sloppy, and poor quality drawings.

[Bubba]

I have been in the position of having no laptop available in the field and need to make a sketch so I can go back to the "office" to make the cad drawing. There have been times that trying to input the info into cad on a laptop would NOT have been time effective. I make my sketch on a "napkin" or what ever and then go back and input it to cad for the final drawing. Just for reference, my industry (fire protection) mainly relys on 2D drawings as most people in the field cannot read and understand 3D or for that matter isometric type drawings!

Saying that all you need to learn is cad is like saying that you don't need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide as you have a calculator! It is a basic principle that you need to learn to be able to give the end product to the customer (boss, who ever), that they can read and understand.

For example, an employee (ex) that we had decided that a line of sprinklers looked 'good' in a particular place on the drawing, but he failed to give any dimensions. Guess what, it looked good in cad, but would not fit in space!!!

By the way, I had a hard time passing "drafting" back in the early 60's and still can't produce a great hand drafted drawing, so cad is my mainstay for that. However, a lot of the drawings that I have done in the past 45 years have been done based on the principals of the hand drawing. AND I still use those basic principals for many of the drawings that I still do today.

[ger21]

However, a lot of the drawings that I have done in the past 45 years have been done based on the principals of the hand drawing. AND I still use those basic principals for many of the drawings that I still do today.

Correct. Hand drafting teaches you fundamentals that most CAD only trained draftsman just don't seem to have these days. And I work in the construction industry as well, and 2D drawings are the standard.

[skullworks]

While I would say a student needs to be taught geometric construction skills, overall hand drawn prints are history.

Part of our ISO 9xxx certification specifies "No hand drawn revisions are valid, only CAD system prints may be used." there is also notes on RCS (Revision Control System) and traceable revision history.

Having the CAD database online allows all our facilities world wide to have immediate access to the current drawnings, also any prints on the shop floor are dated and expire after 10 days.

Every operator is required to check the print date at the start of there shift.

[Bubba]

skullworks,
you state:
"While I would say a student needs to be taught geometric construction skills"

In essence, that is what Ger and I have been saying! I still think a person needs to be able to use a pencil and paper (haven't had to do that since this afternoon) to be competent to do the production job.

While in your case, only cad drawings may be used on the floor, somebody has to make those drawings and they need the skills to do it and many of these skills are based on "doing it by had"! I don't care if your using a pencil or a mouse (digitizer or whatever), you need the background skills to produce the end product.
I see to many who have come out of "school" with a piece of paper that says they know how to cad a drawing, that simply CAN'T! They produce crap on the screen and then don't even know how to get to to plot properly!

[skullworks]

There are many classic drafting skills that need to be taught.

Most people have no clue about Y14.5 standards

1st is proper view placement. (don't get me started on this one.)

Next might be proper tolerancing.

Tell me the size and spec - NOT HOW TO MAKE THE PART - thats my job, not the draftsman.

BTW - drilled holes can be flat bottomed, and threads can go all the way down - but expect the cost ballon to go up.

[Torsten]

While I would say a student needs to be taught geometric construction skills, overall hand drawn prints are history.

Part of our ISO 9xxx certification specifies "No hand drawn revisions are valid, only CAD system prints may be used." there is also notes on RCS (Revision Control System) and traceable revision history.

Having the CAD database online allows all our facilities world wide to have immediate access to the current drawnings, also any prints on the shop floor are dated and expire after 10 days.

Every operator is required to check the print date at the start of there shift.

I have to agree, hand drafting skills are obsolete.
There is no place for this any more be it in a business environment or other.
No point in teaching somebody something they can not use just to please the skill level of the teacher.
Of course many parts Drafting are still valid today and are been past on.
But the overall teaching needs to conform as it is applicable to Cad Drafting.

I do not belive a Hand drafting class is needed just to draw something on a Napkin, get real.

[Bubba]

Not saying that a "full blown" hand drafting class is needed, but the PRINCIPALS are needed. I don't care if you use a pencil or a mouse to make the line, you need to know HOW to think about the procedure needed to make that line. Cad is pencil and the screen is the paper!
The problem I have seen in recent years is that CAD graduates can make a line, but don't have a clue as to how they either got there or how to get it to do what they want.

The computer is NOT the brain. It is the person operating the mouse, digitizer, pencil, whatever you want to call it that matters! The operator still has to THINK and to many of them DON'T!!!!

I recently had one of these cad genius ask me how to do a certain procedure because he hadn't done it in 3 months. Hell, I haven't done that in 3 YEARS!!! But it related back to knowing how to do it "the old fashioned way"

[Rocketman]

I say all the basic fundamentals can be and should be taught in cad and cad only! Mention antique drafting tools in a "history of drafting" lesson that takes up a class at most. I started as a draftsman in a machine shop back in the 70's and now work as a CNC machinist in another machine shop. The only difference between a good draftsman and a bad draftsman has nothing to do with the tools or how the tools are taught but in the understanding of how this information is used on the shop floor. I send drawings back to the office every week with corrections I have added to make the drawings more effective for the next machinist that has to make the part. Mostly it's a learning curve every draftsman has to go through working with the people within a shop to make things flow. The same drawing I use will be useless for the guys in assembly as it has information I need such as thread data for pitch diameter, minimum diameter, maximum diameter, thread length, groove depth, width and diameter. The assembly guys might need more than one part pictured on their drawings to show the part sequence order and overall length once assembled. One drawing will not work for everyone and when I hear of some draftsman that makes poor drawings I'd be willing to bet the guys in the shop are not doing their part in helping the draftsman understand what they want and need from their draftsman.

Yes we could make all the kids in auto-mechanics class waste valuable time learning how to use a spoke-shave tool to make a new spoke for a Ford Model T but what would be the purpose? We don't drive them anymore and don't need those kind of mechanics in the real world.

[HuFlungDung]

While I don't think there is a lot of value in drawing lines on paper and learning to print neatly by hand, the basic layout of parts in 3 views, correct placement of dimensions and correct choice of tolerances is fairly basic stuff to be taught and to be learned.

It is similar to English class: yeah, we can read what you write when full of spelling errors, typos and bad grammer. But that is not satisfactory nor up to standard.

In the same way, we do want computer draftsmen to know the basic etiquette of a good looking print. I guess some CAD programs produce nice prints from a model at the click of a button. IMO, that would be a bad choice for a newbie to begin with. It would simply result in frustration for him to back track and learn how to set up the drawing. Knowing how to set it up also trains the mind in how to read it. Now I don't suppose anyone gets much of a kick out of reading a blueprint for fun, but when you have to make something from someone else's print, that is when learning begins.

[laszlozoltan]

I believe basic drafting principals go with drafting (either cad or by hand) at the start. The concepts exist for those of us who are able to visualize what is being represented at the outset; some people don't get it and never will; hand drafting won't change that limitation. A cad system or pencil and paper are just the tools used to deliver a final product; just like either a hammer and chissel or a multi-axis cnc can be used to manufacture the same part, the difference in time and final product will be obvious