Any old school drafting / designers in here?

Started on Intergraph Microstation and Autocad in 1995. Took a job in Engineering Design group. No one in our group had any idea about PC issues and or networking. I fixed all of our issues. IT guy offered me a job and a good raise. I have been doing IT work since 1998, never looked back.

quote:

---

Any old school drafting / designers in here?
When did you start? What are you using now? I started AutoCAD in 1990. Jeez

---

I thought you meant real draftsmen that worked on hand drawn, pen& ink on mylar plans.

quote:

---

I worked using a drafting table for about 5 years. I put my computer on it.

I was told to make some hand mark-ups by my boss once....just the once.

---

I use autocad now but I still do design presentation sketches by hand.

1978: Pentel

I did start on the board. Moved to Autocad in 1992. How I remember the love hate relationship with the scum x pad.

Revit is an architect dream.

What's amazing is my son is 15 and using AUTOCAD in his Robotics studies.

I started manually drafting for an engineering firm in ~1996 during high school. I didn't know it at the time, but it was already old technology in the late 90s. The engineering firm's owner was ooooold school, hated computers, and was a tight wad. In fact, the "drafting" software he did first was AutoSketch... not even AutoCAD. AutoSketch was SLIGHTLY more advanced than MSPaint.

In some weird coincidence, my 2nd job, right out of high school, was because I passed an entry exam/interview that required manually drafting a plot plan. They too used mix of manual drafting and CAD.

Some things I miss:
- smelling like ammonia after hours of manning the blueline machine (not!)
- running a two-bar polar planimeter to find areas of complex shapes quicker than someone in AutoCAD
- using French curves to take something from boring to sexy
- using a Le Roi or "Leroy" lettering guide for stuff like maps when even the best hand written block lettering guy couldnt do it. (This was only for large lettering.)

I have not met anyone else under the age of 40 that has done this stuff. I'd like to think there will probably be some sort of nostalgic artistic renaissance that would revive manual drafting in some niche way to produce a work of art. The same way with calligraphy and stuff on Etsy.

Initially learned on the board, but never did any production work that way. I learned ACAD 12 in late 90's. Worked on AutoCAD and Microstation over the years always in the piping sector.
Currently do admin work on AVEVA software.