help with scale drawing
- Thread starter diyspud
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i haven't got a clue about software (cue shytalkz and woody), but my preferred choice is 1:50.
1:100 is ok for planning but lacks detail and accuracy.
1:100 is ok for planning but lacks detail and accuracy.
Choose your drawing or CAD package and then set the scale to your chosen one. Try TurboCad (.co.uk) or google for others
But in AutoCAD and most professional packages, you actually draw at 1:1 scale and then scale the model for printing. But the software does it all
If you are doing it old skool, then use a scale rule (the triangle ones are best)
1:100 is only good enough for a general [layout] view, and you will have to go to 1:50 for working drawings and 1:10 or 1:20 for details
But in AutoCAD and most professional packages, you actually draw at 1:1 scale and then scale the model for printing. But the software does it all
If you are doing it old skool, then use a scale rule (the triangle ones are best)
1:100 is only good enough for a general [layout] view, and you will have to go to 1:50 for working drawings and 1:10 or 1:20 for details
If you fancy doing a bit of 3D work, then Sketchup is good. However, if you've never drawn before, then stick with 2D packages, like, as Woodster says, TurboCad or similar. Whatever you do, don't go getting a copy of AutoCAD, hooky or otherwise, it will put you off for life!
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Technophobe Shytalkz?
Yes, but how many people do you know who draw at 1:1 and then scale a drawing sheet over it, rather than using paperspace for the purpose for which it's intended?!
Ah Flat Worlders.
An ex colleague still draws everything in model space, his enlarged details are just that - bloody nightmare to work on one of his creations.
If you think AutoCAD is overpriced (I use 2008 here at home) check out Microstation or some of it's competitors, scary prices.
The newer incarnations are catching up with how people actually use it - the associative text and dimensioning allows you to effectively "set" a scale on your model for a given viewport.
I still reckon Medusa (cost about the same as space shuttle) was the easiest to learn.
An ex colleague still draws everything in model space, his enlarged details are just that - bloody nightmare to work on one of his creations.
If you think AutoCAD is overpriced (I use 2008 here at home) check out Microstation or some of it's competitors, scary prices.
The newer incarnations are catching up with how people actually use it - the associative text and dimensioning allows you to effectively "set" a scale on your model for a given viewport.
I still reckon Medusa (cost about the same as space shuttle) was the easiest to learn.
my old mate Bob, draws in models space, scales the drawing frame up to whatever scale he needs, then plots from model space. If his drawing is 1:50 say, and he has a 1:10 detail - he draws it 5 times oversize and edits all the dims etc. Nightmare!
Better that that, I worked at a consultants over the river in Hull a couple of years ago. they draw in PAPERSPACE
(honest) they scale the paperspace to suit. They only use model space and viewports to create different scale details. They dont use X-refs etc. (good job, they wouldn't work ) Myself and a few other freelancers tried to explain how the rest of the world does it, but their CAD manager told us we were wrong. I didn't stay long.Ah, yes, know quite a few Bobs....and, as you say, it's next to nigh-on impossible to work on their drawings, or link with them.
I can understand doing the scale drawings in paperspace more, as in that being how we did it the old days or Rotrings and Double Elephants, of course, but quite how people don't get the 1:1 and scale a viewport concept is beyond me.
As it is, I hate the exactness/blandness of AutoCAD, so I draw as I would for real, viz using thin construction lines which cross over, then go over in a thicker virtual pen and with use of grey shading for x-sections. Bit more work, but it looks less CAD; the more so as I painstakingly made a Rotring stencil (old type) into a TT font, ditto my scrawl, then converted them to shx fonts, so they now look as close as I can get them to my old hand drawings.
I still prefer Sketchup though, especially as I bought the Pro version and generated my own scruffy lines, I sometimes import the detail back into AutoCAD to write over with my personal fonts and then it is nigh on impossible to tell that it's all computer-generated. Scaling in a jpeg can get a bit tricky though....!
I can understand doing the scale drawings in paperspace more, as in that being how we did it the old days or Rotrings and Double Elephants, of course, but quite how people don't get the 1:1 and scale a viewport concept is beyond me.
As it is, I hate the exactness/blandness of AutoCAD, so I draw as I would for real, viz using thin construction lines which cross over, then go over in a thicker virtual pen and with use of grey shading for x-sections. Bit more work, but it looks less CAD; the more so as I painstakingly made a Rotring stencil (old type) into a TT font, ditto my scrawl, then converted them to shx fonts, so they now look as close as I can get them to my old hand drawings.
I still prefer Sketchup though, especially as I bought the Pro version and generated my own scruffy lines
, I sometimes import the detail back into AutoCAD to write over with my personal fonts and then it is nigh on impossible to tell that it's all computer-generated. Scaling in a jpeg can get a bit tricky though....!Alas my client list is mostly highways, railways or water companies [who are all thankfully recession proof ] so individuality has to be submerged in favour of a corporate style.
I think most of the cad monkeys who cling to the flat world way learned on early versions, when computers couldn't cope with all the regen's needed for multiple viewports etc. and are just too curmudgeonly to learn anything new.
On the flip side I worked with a lad who used to draw absolutley everything on top of the same model - in this case a 4 storey office block - and use the layer protocol in each viewport to make sense of it. It had the advantage that all the slab openings were guaranteed to line up, but it was close to impossible to make any sense of it in model space.
With the move towards paper free information systems it is possible to use colour much more in drawings now, (we send everything out in pdf format by email or web hosting) so the drawings are starting to look less clinical, but I do miss the actual skill required to be able to produce a neat, good looking drawing using ink on tracing paper and to do it quickly. I even have my old drawing board drafting machine somewhere at the back of the garage. Oh happy carefree days.
] so individuality has to be submerged in favour of a corporate style.I think most of the cad monkeys who cling to the flat world way learned on early versions, when computers couldn't cope with all the regen's needed for multiple viewports etc. and are just too curmudgeonly to learn anything new.
On the flip side I worked with a lad who used to draw absolutley everything on top of the same model - in this case a 4 storey office block - and use the layer protocol in each viewport to make sense of it. It had the advantage that all the slab openings were guaranteed to line up, but it was close to impossible to make any sense of it in model space.
With the move towards paper free information systems it is possible to use colour much more in drawings now, (we send everything out in pdf format by email or web hosting) so the drawings are starting to look less clinical, but I do miss the actual skill required to be able to produce a neat, good looking drawing using ink on tracing paper and to do it quickly. I even have my old drawing board drafting machine somewhere at the back of the garage. Oh happy carefree days.
Corporate style: now there's an oxymoron! Lucky you for recession-proofing though!
Yep, one of the CAD monkeys to whom I sub out work does his all on top of one another, turns into a mass of lines as you say. If it greyed out non-active layers, that would be good - which SU does, if you make components and then want to work on them. I've tried the on top thing, got lost, so make a copy, drag it off and OLE it, so that I don't have to work my way through the layers, but can update it on its own then check the effects on the other layers. The principle is fine, but it's just soooo easy to mess it up!
You can tell those who are CAD monkeys and those who were pukka detailers of old - not least as to how they set their drawings out. As you say, those were t'days, when smoking was allowed in the office, we all got excited over some new Rotring invention that you typed into and got it to stencil on the drawings, of rucked up paper in the morning cos you forgot to take the parallel motion off it and untape the bottom edges, of hollowing out cheese rubbers out with a blade, of slashing your fingers with a razor blade left carelessly on the parallel motion, when you swept the rubber bits off the drawing, of having to change a drawing so many times, that scratching out resulted in a hole in the paper....
Yep, one of the CAD monkeys to whom I sub out work does his all on top of one another, turns into a mass of lines as you say. If it greyed out non-active layers, that would be good - which SU does, if you make components and then want to work on them. I've tried the on top thing, got lost, so make a copy, drag it off and OLE it, so that I don't have to work my way through the layers, but can update it on its own then check the effects on the other layers. The principle is fine, but it's just soooo easy to mess it up!
You can tell those who are CAD monkeys and those who were pukka detailers of old - not least as to how they set their drawings out. As you say, those were t'days, when smoking was allowed in the office, we all got excited over some new Rotring invention that you typed into and got it to stencil on the drawings, of rucked up paper in the morning cos you forgot to take the parallel motion off it and untape the bottom edges, of hollowing out cheese rubbers out with a blade, of slashing your fingers with a razor blade left carelessly on the parallel motion, when you swept the rubber bits off the drawing, of having to change a drawing so many times, that scratching out resulted in a hole in the paper....
I remember those rotring things, painful and non querty.
Thankfully since I used to work in a multi discipline design office - we had civil, structural and architectural etc. all in one place, I could hold my own with the artichokes, so I got to do it all without stencils.
Funny old world climbed out from behind my board in my twenties, but I make more cash driving a CAD station now than doing calc's or site work.
I like doing the lot, in my own way...which is probably why I work on my own! No corporate stylee here, just me and how I want to do it . Don't think I could ever got back to fulltime draffying though, especially if I was having to do it to someone else's style. Then again, if desperation kicks in....!!!
. Don't think I could ever got back to fulltime draffying though, especially if I was having to do it to someone else's style. Then again, if desperation kicks in....!!!DIYnot Local
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