How CAD and BIM have changed, and how I changed with them.
A draughtsmanās journey. Nanette Dorando describes her 30-year transition, from the days of ink and paper to the world of 3D and data masks. Was it all worth it? Itās a question weāve all come up against: how do you get that great idea in your head out into the world where everyone can see it and use it? When I started my apprenticeship as a draughtsman in 1988, it was the traditional way of producing plans and drawings, using ink pens on transparent paper to bring that idea to life. This required not only a good spatial sense, but also a certain amount of imagination and understanding of technical contexts, especially when it came to producing 2D plans, sections, views, and details in enlarged scale from the hand-drawn sketches. There was no “erase function.” Anything that needed to be changed had to be carefully and sensitively removed, layer by layer, from the transparent paper using a razor blade. Today, in the world of CAD and BIM, your ideas take a very different route. Instead of being hand drawn, they are entered into the respective data masks when creating, say, a floor plan. The invaluable advantage is that you can