Moving to New Technologies in Design Drafting and "As Building"

Abstract

Drawing is said to be the language of Engineers. In a simple drawing, we could depict what would require a thousand words to describe. No wonder why the technocrats always love to present their case with the aid of sketches and drawings. In the olden days, technical concepts and ideas were transformed into paper using pencils and erasers and the media was tracing paper. It had the inherent disadvantage that pencil writings were getting smudged or erased with the passage of time and the tracing paper was getting torn or damaged. Gradually, the pencil leads gave way to ink; so also, the tracing paper was replaced with tracing films. Stencils with suitable size pens and drawing instruments like set squares, protractor, compass. French curve & dividers gradually became the order of the day. Drawing boards with fancy Tee squares started decorating the drafting offices. Quality improvements came to the fore, not just in presentation; but in productivity and storage of drawings. During the Industrial Revolution, draftsmanship gradually became a specialized trade and drawing tables were considered an integral part of a Design or Engineering office. In those days, they were made of fine wood and brass; but slowly became more utilitarian and were built of steel and plastic.

Enhancing Students’ Creativity Using Biomimetic Parametric Design Approach

“…Nowadays, digital technologies and their applications have gained an important place in our professional, teaching, and research field [1]. The conventional tools such as pencil, paper, and traditional drawing tables are being progressively replaced by digital tools [2] opening the door for new possibilities for the ideation and the communication of design projects in our academic and/or professional activities. These tools have become the primary working instruments in practicing and teaching design and architecture because of their massive development in both hardware and software capabilities and their growing affordability allowing wider access to these tools and their use on a larger scale.…”