Thread: Does anyone still draw by hand

I'm no CAD guru or anything, nor do I build a lot of things... but to me the simple fact that manufacturing has come such a long way means the move to 3d CAD in some way is inevitable, if you're ever to try things you can't just cut and create...

Want to design a CNC cut knob to replace one on a bandsaw? Want to 3d print a magnet holder for something? There's just two simple things that are achievable in-house today, whereas they were specialty manufacturing years ago.

Had a perfect example today of how I like to work; I need to make up a small cutter guard for one of our machines. I basically know how I want it to look and function, so it's easiest to do a rough sketch on paper at the machine and scribble down dimensions.

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But I also need to see it drawn properly to scale to make sure that I haven't missed anything and to see what size corner radius will look good, so it's off to autocad to make a proper production drawing.

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Taking that part as an example I could build a 3D model of it in a few minutes. It'd probably take me longer to produce a drawing from the model, unless I used auto dimension..but I could do the whole job in about 10 minutes.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, First Nations have very distinctive drawing art and carving styles.
There are instruction books with lessons to teach you how to draw the design elements.
Broadly, there are 4 distinctly different carving/art styles and all else of probably a fake.

Many carvers, me included, get tired of original drawings for ovoids and trigons and feathers and eyes.
In the old days, templates were cut out of birch bark for repetitive use.
These days, the stencils in a grand range of sizes get cut out of plastic sheet.
Not so different from the Staedler drawing/drafting stencil templates.

The great advantage comes with needing design elements to the left and right of a central line for symmetry.

regarding @ubeaut's rant ...

Well, that was my good chuckle for the day, thanks.
I totally get that thing about 25 years or so ago. Just how many software products had little quirks like that. Ye gods.
I had both Word 2 and MS Worx eat documents and casually destroy the backup copies while they were at it. (which
is why I quit using MS programs) - I had a Microsoft programming language that would generate random results if
you tried a certain boolean operation - debugging that was fun, because random. ("if not i then do ...")

I can still do things with my rotring pencil on paper, but when we started designing my new workshop, and then our
new house, I ended up learning sketchup. Google built it, and it was free. I now design my larger furniture pieces on it.
The biggest advantage is, I can take accurate measurements off the software without having to rely on a ruler and my
66 year old eyes. And now I have a 3d printer .... sketchup can export files that the slicer software can understand.
I made some dust extractor adapters for non-standard tool dust ports ... without CAD I could NOT do that. Plus, there
are a -ton of excellent tutorial videos out there! It can be tricky to use the intricate stuff, like odd curves in 3 dimensions,
but it hasn't done a crash and burn on me yet, like your friend experienced.
(and gods, those American "Christians"; most of them have never even heard of Spinoza and the Age of Enlightenment,
theologically they still live in the Dark Ages ....)

I have been a CAD designer for many decades and previous to that on a drawing board. As mentioned earlier like most things people look for what has been done by hand many decades ago. And so there are people who buy old drawing boards, old ink pens, and stencils and as a hobby do some old drawings by hand.

Their work is simply amazing what they are doing. If you have a look at what was expected even of apprentices It is great work.
Just do a google search to find out what some are paying for the old particularly French drawing boards. But the art of quality hand sketches is dieing for sure.