Old school vs. digital drafting tables - I went analog again

Back in 2018 I was working on a residential addition over in Maplewood and had to choose between my beat-up old drafting table or switching fully to a tablet setup. I went with the tablet for about 6 months but my wrist started killing me from tapping on glass all day, plus the zooming in and out felt slower than just moving a pencil. So I grabbed my old 36x48 board with the parallel bar from the basement, bought a fresh roll of vellum for 12 bucks at the local art store, and never looked back. Has anyone else gone back to paper for certain jobs after trying digital for a while?

3 comments

3 Comments

ninas6729d ago

Buddy of mine tried going digital and ended up drawing on sticky notes instead.

olivia39829d ago

oh man, 100% agree. i went full digital for a few years with an ipad pro and pencil but my hand would cramp up so bad after a few hours. plus i got tired of the screen glare and battery dying at the worst times. i picked up an old drafting board from a garage sale for like 20 bucks and bought a big roll of trace paper and honestly my drawings look way better now. there's just something about actually feeling the pencil drag across the paper that makes my lines more confident lol

nora11029d ago

@olivia398 nailed it with the hand cramp thing, that's exactly why I switched back too. I actually took apart an old architect's parallel rule from the 70s and bolted it to a salvaged door from a reno job, works like a charm for like 15 bucks total. Paper lets you rough out ideas faster without messing with layers and menu stuff, plus you can tape trace paper right over your sketch without hitting some undo button. Having the vellum there makes it way easier to flip between plan views and elevations too since you can just overlay sheets instead of swapping tabs.