Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to The bad news...

"at least a wash."
Robert — (archived)

We all have to hold on to hope that that's true. A "wash" is a statistical concept that hides some real pain, unfortunately...an don' it make my Lib'ral heart bleed. Different topic for another time.

It's hard to convey to those who don't work with or in high-tech that sense of multiplied power, as intangible as it is. I took a drafting class in high school so I have one intellectual endpoint at the end of a tradition several centuries old, and the other still moving through CAD and graphics and DTP. To riff on myself, I remember where the term cut-and-paste came from, and it evokes the memory of the smell of rubber cement. What I labored over for a day amid a dusting of eraser crumbs and graphite smudges and a litter of vellum scraps I can do in a few minutes with commodity software.

I think that sometimes there are intangibles that are lost in addition to jobs. There's an inhuman consistency to CAD drawings, a sort of barren perfection without the possibility of the occasional embellishments a good human draftsman might add. The good draftsmen I've known had recognizable styles, which you'd learn to see in signature marks like arrowheads and callouts, and of course distinctive block lettering. I always had a soft spot for Adobe's Tekton font for the way it captured the classic draftsman's style.

Which raises an interesting point: Is it really necessary for CAD drawings to evolve toward bland consistency? Why go with Helvetica on engineering drawings when you could use Tekton in homage to tradition? An icon is an icon, why use a boring triangular arrowhead when you could use a jaunty swooped and filligreed arrowhead? The computer doesn't care, so why do people tend to program them to be bland? Live a little, CADdies! Illuminate your manuscripts like those medieval monks. Break the monotony.

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