CAD vs. Paper

I'm still using crayons.

 

have you - or anyone here - worked with an art-pad/art-pen before?

it is quite the same as drawing on paper... with the only difference that the lines show up on your PC screen and you need only just 1 pen instead of a whole couple (different colour/types/mines whatever)...
the skills to draw a straight line or nicely curved one you have to learn no matter what!
those are just different tools - take it as a brand new 'pen' which doesn't wear of, needs no sharpening, refilling etc...

the drawing is not done by the PC but by you!

 

only since some months and not that much couse for 3d got logitechs performance mx mouse
got a good aiptek 14" pad but smaller pads can have advantages too i now read
in 2d check that some programs support the pen better than others
wonder what acad 2d/3d users use? switch pen and mouse?
as for cad vs paper; paperfreak i am, i even doodle in cad

 

I have a spaceball. Don't use it. Have a digital pad. Don't use that either.

The interesting thing about CAD (or even more generally, illustrating as in Adobe Illustrator), the skill comes in at managing the 'inferred' entity creation tools. Meaning that you don't draw a line, you describe the parameters for it either graphically or numerically. I think that's where the reverence comes in. The sense that somehow you are detached from the actual result of 'drawing'. There certainly is some satisfaction to handling a pencil and putting down a line. I will say I disagree that pencil and paper will disappear as a medium. Just like I doubt that printed books will disappear. At least not in my lifetime. It may become a colloquial past time, but consider that we still play and listen to classical music on instruments designed centuries ago. Drawing will be relagated to art form and frankly I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

True, just as showing a walk-around or fly-thru of a poor design does little to impress, little minds are easily amused. People who expect such things, often don't want to pay for them because they view it as entertainment and not work. Just because they saw it on TV, is not a design set or true understanding.

I'm an architect with over 25 years experience, the best 3D is a real model often of paper and foam core board. I'd be hard pressed to find a client which did not understand a real model.

For fun working with clay for studying complex shapes found in airplanes, automobiles and trucks is rewarding too. No computer can beat clay in your hands for that life/art experience. Then again I cannot sent a clay file to a robot to make the part either. Kind of nice to be able to do it all, still working on it.

 

i was just going to type what dreamer said. we still play at acoustic instruments. no matter how good a synth drum may become its still just the samples that are available. if its not programmed, its not possible to do.

and the art pad is not the same thing as paper and pencil. at least not yet. the pens doesent move over the pad like a pencil over paper, and the drawing is not displayed on the pad as conveniently as on paper.

 

Interesting.

Drawing in Cad is like drawing with an eraser..............most of the time is spent editing, not creating.

 

Spot on! it feels like youre calculating estimations to re-calculate them just to se if it looks better or not...

 

I am self taught and no expert so it may be that I do it completely wrong but I rarely draw anything in cad except sections for extrusions or lofts. I model what I am designing in 3d using various modifiers or boolean functions. more or less as if I were building it .The great thing about a 3d model as apposed to a physical one is that it can be changed interactively with a few clicks of the mouse. Physical models on the other hand are generally made after the design is almost final. Modeling on a computer for me is more akin to sculpture than it is to drawing. Of course I use the computer as an aid to conceptualization, and I do it for fun not for a living ,so I have no need of converting my 3d models to accurate 2d section plans.

 

it is all a matter of how used you are to/with the 'tool'...
hardly anyone remembers how awkward and difficult it felt, when they started writing/drawing in elementary or even earlier...
do you?
but now you see that it is hard to work with new means and it feels not like a creative process but a managing one...
ask yourself where this feeling is coming from and then ask if kids who grew up with this medium might see it the same way...

try to think back - you were a toddler learning to hold a pencil and drew your first line on paper with your tongue sticking out of your mouth and sweat on your forehead...
i am dammn sure that your concentration was focused a 100% on handling the bloody pen and not on your creative imagination...

 

I just bought my 4yr old granddaughter a Leapster game for her birthday. It consists of "The Princess and the Frog" and periodically stops and explains and demonstrates the basic shapes in the scene on the screen. circles, lines, triangles etc. Then it lets her arrange those shapes.

Is this not the first class in AutoCad? And she walks around with it in her hands all day.

I can only hope I did the right thing, but I do know I did the timely thing.

Odd thing is as I watch this argument unfold, we are debating it on a computer network forum. I wonder how many of us would write down each of our posts longhand and mail it to each participant in the thread.

 

You are correct, this is what is taught at most schools and practiced in most offices. However the exceptions to the rule are often brilliant, when the "art of the unexpected" is allowed to graze in the prairie of rich architectural grasses.

Most people also put a model on a table top and look down on them, again missing the whole point of the exercise. The value of a real model is not the final product, it is the thinking process you go through. It also helps to pick it up and look at it at all angles, maybe even bend your knees and get to eye-level.

I once asked an instructor why his course was called "Life Drawing" and not "Drawing Nudes" or "Drawing Stills". He replied; because you experience life as you draw.

Best answer ever!

 

The art of language is expressed in the text of the forum indeed. However there is no art of penmanship and along with it perhaps a gentler tone of comprehensive reasoning. What I mean is people tend to argue and debate much more in an interactive forum verses a solo exploration.

 

yeah, cyberarguing is a lot more fun. I can't imagine myself writing this crap out longhand.

The world is going into a new age of technology. virtually everything has gone digital and I have seen this argument a dozen times pertaining to digital vs film, led readouts vs bronze gauges, microwaves vs wood cookstoves, diesel vs steam, and on and on.

Seems every advancement has it's promoters and every advancement has its dissenters. But the advancement will come.

I grew up in Chicago where skyskrapers raced into the sky and as much as I am overwhelmed by each new building, I am still awed to think that the Empire State Building in New York was built using a sliderule and a bubble level. and it is still one of the most magnificient buildings in the world.

Way I see it boat design by CAD will be seen the same. We won't stop advancing in design through computers but I don't think the reverance for the old classics designed by pencil and paper should be dismissed either.

Just take pride in your segment of the evolution. The new technologies only give us a greater respect for the wonders accomplished without them.

so will someone please answer my question.

"Which is better? A Cad drawing of a cat eating an apple in a Ford? Or a pencil drawing of a dog eating an orange in a Chevy?"

I guess that will depend on if the Ford and Chevy had stick shift or automatic.

so many determinants here.

 

Brilliant observation and matches my experience when working on a CAD project with people who do know that business.