Chatted with a fresh grad who only knows CAD, missing the basics?

Thinking about offering some old-school drafting tips but not sure if it's worth it, what do you guys think lol?

3 comments

3 Comments

At my friend's design shop, they only use CAD for all their projects now. I see what @kevinc52 means about having a strong base, but is drawing by hand really that serious? CAD shows you how parts fit together in 3D right from the start. You can spin the model around and spot problems without ever using a pencil. That seems way faster than messing with old drafting tools. Maybe learning the basics isn't as big a deal as people say.

kevinc524d ago

Absolutely, do it. CAD is just a tool. Without the basics, you're just clicking buttons. Old-school drafting shows how things fit together and why designs work. That makes you much better at using CAD. It's not about old methods, it's about having a strong base.

adamthompson4d ago

Totally agree with @kevinc52. Learning manual drafting in school forced me to actually visualize how parts fit together before making a line. I remember spending hours on an exploded view drawing, which made me think about assembly order in a way CAD never did. That mental model stuck with me. Now when I model in 3D, I'm not just extruding shapes, I'm building the thing in my head first.