How does the slower process lead to a superior result, exactly? Are there designs that modern CAD systems can't achieve that the older process could? If so, perhaps it would be more practical to focus on closing that gap by improving our modern tooling.
Modern CAD systems tend to produce reproducible, very similar systems. Drafting produces individualized solutions. "Superior" depends on what you want.
(For housing, I want individualized so badly. If I see one more SillyValley SWE storehouse - excuse me, "luxury housing" - I'm going to vomit. They're all exactly the same. I'm fairly certain the firms involved have traded macros or something)
I'm not sure you can close that gap. I've done both drafting and CAD design (amateur level), and... you approach the space differently. Drafting almost forces you to have a plan, while CAD very much is "as you go".
Housing is super expensive in SFBA because it's all individual. In SF any housing project needs to make it through design meetings where all your neighbors make arbitrary aesthetic complaints about how it looks and how it casts shadows on things.
To get housing back to the rates it was built (and the price you could buy it at) in the 60s it needs to be a hundred times faster and more factory manufactured, not less.
Luckily, if you wait a hundred years people will like anything. That's the only reason people like mass-produced Eichlers, SF Victorians, and NYC brownstones.
I mean, I know the Bay Area fails to understand that, but you scale up housing by building more multi-level housing, not faster building of single homes.
And what multi-level housing there is being built is absolutely devoid of any creativity already, it can't really get more factory-like.
You’re able to perform much more robust and detailed calculations using computers compared to hand. You’re able to iterate more rapidly. The only thing I can think of is that the designer or engineer has more time to ruminate on their design. Or there is no artistry in a computer generated print.
It’s probably the bias in my training (mechanical engineering tech and not architecture or industrial design) and what I’m trying to accomplish through drafting, but I don’t get this romanticism for hand drafting.
My program, in the mid-2010s, had 13 weeks of hand drafting. The program still does that in the 2020s. My program emphasized sketching and drafting as a core component of the engineering design process. So hand drafting is still taught, and there may be sampling bias at play in the other comments. Or my hand drafting isn’t “real hand drafting.”
Sketching allows you to iterate through different designs early on. You then move into the detailed design which results in the manufacturing specs. For example, hole sizing and location, material thickness. We absolutely did all of these calculations by hand in our courses, so you need to be able to draw something out. You’d simplify and not worry about completely accurate proportions, though.
I guess before the rise of CAD systems, you’d hand over a bunch of rough design papers with the final dimensions for a drafter to prepare the final print.
However, with computers we now do the detailed design through computer aided engineering (CAE) software. This requires a 3D model of what you’re building. You run the simulation and find out that the thickness of the material isn’t suitable, so you change the thickness in the model and re-run the simulation.
This CAE process gives the engineer the 2D print for “free.” All the information needed to create the 2D print are embedded in the 3D model. You just pick which projections you want in 2D and you specify the dimensions and tolerance. Now that’s done and there is no need to draft it by hand.
