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How do you teach drafting?
Every other Spring semester I teach a grad-level class in computer-aided drafting for theatre. When I started at Purdue in 2004, I was told this was “an AutoCAD class.” Unfortunately, there were no existing syllabi from the previous incarnations of the course, so I had little to go on other than this vague statement about course content. It was only my second semester teaching at Purdue, so determined to do great things I gamely taught a course “on AutoCAD,” a course that taught students how the line tool worked, how to maneuver in Model Space, what viewports and layouts were—essentially the rudiments of navigating AutoCAD as a drafting tool. (It’s worth noting that I had to quickly teach myself AutoCAD the previous semester—I had been a die-hard VectorWorks draftsperson since the days when it was MiniCad!)
In the incarnations of the course since that difficult, at times distasteful, and sluggishly boring class for all involved in Spring of 2005, I’ve endeavored to take a different approach to the course. After all, it is a graduate-level course, and it seems somewhat odd to me that students at that level should be taking a course in how to use a piece of software—we don’t generally teach graduate-level courses on how to use Microsoft Word, or Adobe Photoshop. We do often teach graduate-level courses in how to use pieces of software well—and that’s how I’ve approached the course in the last few years: how to draft well in AutoCAD.
I bring this up because my colleagues and I worked our way through an interesting conversation this afternoon about how we go about (and how we think we should go about) teaching drafting to our students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Currently, there are two courses: an undergraduate course, where students are introduced to the essentials of mechanical drawing by hand (ground plans, sections, orthos, isos, lettering, line weights and types, etc.), and a graduate course (mine) where I attempt to teach them to draft well in AutoCAD, reinforcing the techniques that are introduced in the undergraduate class, as well as exploring how traditional (analog/paper) graphic standards can be developed to facilitate communication in the modern, digital world (where increasingly drawings are viewed on screens, not on paper).
We’ve run into some difficulties with this sequence, however: in order to succeed in the graduate level class, you have to know how to draft, and you have to know how to navigate around in AutoCAD (or be really comfortable picking it up quickly). There isn’t time in the graduate-level class to teach someone how to use AutoCAD, nor is there time to teach someone basic mechanical drawing skills. This means two groups of students are left out in the cold: those who have had mechanical drawing experience, but no AutoCAD, and those who have had neither, but only have room for one drafting class in their plan of study (a common problem amongst our interdisciplinary theatre engineering students). (The third and fourth permutations—students with no hand-drafting experience but who know AutoCAD, and students who have been exposed to both—tend to fare reasonably well in the course.)
Additionally, some students may never use AutoCAD after they leave Purdue, preferring the more budget-friendly VectorWorks (or other similar applications), or working in venues that use these other applications. (Ask anyone in this business if there’s an industry-standard CAD application, and you’ll get a resounding yes. Ask what that application is, and you’ll get something that sounds like “AuVectoCArks” as everyone shouts their favorite tool loudly.) Although I am moving toward incorporating projects using both applications into the graduate-level class I teach, when that happens, there most assuredly won’t be time in the semester to teach students how to use VectorWorks, either.
All of this seems to leave students ill-prepared for future endeavors related to drafting.
We have talked through some possible solutions to this problem, but the ramifications of almost all of them are wide-ranging. Questions we’re wrestling with include:
- Is hand-drafting a “dead” or “dying” art (i.e., should we still be teaching it)?
- Does there need to be a sequential progression beginning with hand-drafting and culminating in CAD?
- Is 3-D drafting an essential part of CAD training?
- What does drafting collaboration in a digital environment look like?
- Is it important to teach students about CAD standards (i.e., agreed-upon, company/venue-wide layers, colors, title-blocks, etc.)?
- Is the day of the single, shared file, with appropriate layers/layer sets for different disciplines rapidly approaching?
I’ve been anxiously awaiting word from the working group developing the CAD standards for USITT (developed through the Technical Production Commission), in the hope that some of these questions might be addressed. In the meantime, though, we’re trying to hash these questions out and consider how best to present a sequence of courses in drafting that addresses all of our students needs. Some won’t be able to take more than one course, but still must be hand drafting- and CAD-capable; others may need to only know enough CAD to be able to put together a light plot or sound plot, but not need to know the intricacies of annotative scales and saved views; some may need to be exceptionally proficient hand draftspeople, while still others may need to develop extraordinary digital collaboration skills using hyperlinked views and dynamic layer visibility states to share complex drawings instantly online.
It’s a difficult question we’re facing, but one I suspect many other instructors have wrestled with before—or are wrestling with now. If you’re one of those faculty, I’m very curious to hear what you’ve decided. For those of you who draft (either by hand or on the computer, using AutoCAD, VectorWorks, or their less familiar cousins): what are your thoughts? What is important for you about what you do? What should we be teaching? How vital are some of the things I’ve mentioned above?
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Comment
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Comment by Erich Friend on November 2, 2011 at 9:51pm -
As a person that learned hand drafting first, graduated from pencil-on-paper to ink-on-mylar, then wrote a CAD program, then learned AutoCad, Generic Cad, and others, it appears to me that cad tools are just 400 HP pencils. Knowing a cad program does not make you and architect, engineer, artist, or set designer. It is vital to separate the design ability from the documentation ability. Some of the best architects I have ever worked with couldn't operate a computer, but they could design beautiful buildings. This great design ability might even have been because they weren't constrained by the fairly rigid framework of a cad environment. Their hands were free to go where the mind took them.
Learning cad skills can / maybe even should be done without actually sitting at the computer. Discuss the goals and objectives of the drawing in the classroom. Present some of the tools (keystrokes / button presses) that they will need to be aware of to accomplish the task, and then let them work it out on their own. No need for complicated expensive cad programs like AutoCad, there are many very affordable / free programs out there to use. It is the concepts you are trying to teach, not the program.
The next day you can briefly go through the steps that an experienced draftsman would have done to achieve the previous day's goal. Then move on to the next skill to be learned. By building many small pieces that teach lessons, the student will learn the tools needed to accomplish larger tasks.
As a consumer of other people's blocks and drawings, I can say that the best drawings I get are those that are simple, well organized, and constructed with blocks that are well thought-out. Building large objects and assemblies requires that you understand how to build a library of reusable blocks. The larger elements of model space, paper space, and xrefs are really just extensions of this modular approach. If you can do it in 2D you can learn to do it in 3D. The world is going to 3D, so plan on learning it.
Deconstructing professionally done drawings can be a useful learning tool, too. You can learn a lot about what works, and what doesn't, by digging around in a drawing done by a pro.
One final thing: Draw everything real size, then scale it as needed into the paper space. This makes life much easier for the next person that has to use your drawing product.
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Comment by Ian Boze on October 28, 2011 at 4:46pm -
from a student point of view I can tell you what I think:
hand drafting should focus on the process of drafting and not the specific drafting standards. I feel that the merits of hand drafting are the same as when I take the team building/problem solving engineering classes the classes are not designed for you to necessarily learn the content but learn how to think and that is what I feel hand drafting should be. A method upon which to teach how to think about drafting. since CAD software is essentially drafting just on a computer.
in terms of my thoughts about the alphabet soup of CAD software out there, most of them will do the same thing and in general have similar keystrokes. I tend to lean to Auto CAD; however, any cheap or free CAD software is best as most theater technicians who will be drafting or want to draft will be purchasing the software license themselves. 3D drafting I thought would be something that I would use and it in industry, however after working with architects ground plans will always be ground plans and elevations will always be elevations. technology is too fragile to carry around in the shop and 3D printers are not something that every shop can afford. in addition the element that makes most theater technicians, designers, and good engineers is the ability to visualize in their mind. 3D modeling has its merits in simulations of will something fit through a doorway, or will all that stuff really fit into a 12' truck.
drafting standards are anything but I am reminded of a pirates quote "the code is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules."different places have their own set of symbols that they use and a template that they use for view ports. have the knowledge of how to use the tools of the program and how to follow a standard that you have been given outweigh the memorization of any specific "standard" way of doing things.
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Comment by Joseph Donovan on October 28, 2011 at 9:36am -
I teach drafting at the undergrad level. I have one course "Drafting for Theatre" and it is split right down the middle. First half of the semester is hand second half is CAD. I do this for several reasons but the biggest reason is that when I have tried to teach CAD to people who have never drafted they get bogged down in the "what button do I push" while trying to understand the concept of drafting, as Eric mentioned. I find that teaching them how to draft, by hand, helps them concentrate on learning that. Then when we go to CAD they can concentrate on the program and learn that. By then end they are doing some 3D but not a lot.
I have found that Kent Goetz's tutorials (http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/thetr263/VW2009/VW09Tutr.html) although outdated still worked well for this process. I contacted him and asked if he would mind if I updated them for my class and he was very willing to allow that so I will be doing that before I teach this again.
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Comment by Eric Hart on October 28, 2011 at 7:16am -
There was a panel on this very subject at this year's USITT, with Patricia Woodbridge. They were overwhelmingly coming from the perspective that you need learn hand drafting because that teaches you how to communicate through drafting, as opposed to CAD, which teaches you how to use a piece of software. It would seem though, if you taught students how to draft well in CAD as you are trying, that would eliminate any need for hand drafting.
Of course, this also depends on who you are teaching. We still have plenty of designers who draft by hand, even on Broadway and off-Broadway. The technical drafting is all done by the technical director and master carpenter; since they need to generate their own drawings anyway, it doesn't really matter what kind of drafting the scenic designer does. Some of them even tell me that a poorly-laid out or badly-formatted CAD file takes just as long to fix as it takes to trace or scan in a hand drafting.
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