Saturday, April 23, 2011

Purpose (designed and) built for Architects

I started learning technical drafting on my father’s drawing machine, the type with two rulers fixed at right angle to each other but adjustable to any angle through a button.
(he was a mechanical engineer and we had a couple of those around our house)

My teacher told me off. It was totally inappropriate. I was to use a T square or a parallel motion.
Those were purposely built for architects.

I obliged, first by getting a T square, then at University I graduated to a parallel ruler that caused me endless trouble with its fishing-line sophistication.
I persisted. If I was to become a proper architect, I had to use purpose designed tools.

A quarter of a century later, I now know better. Actually, I broke up with the practice some time ago.
Ten years ago I amazed the local Archicad supplier by a colourful CV fully prepared on Plotmaker. (quite a clumsy plotting tool related-to but not part of Archicad)

These days I choose my tools according to what they can do.
Curiously, the most headway I’ve made so far in construction-support-services was when I adopted a tool designed for aircraft developers.
I use Powerpoint regularly to create PDF templates, brochures or handouts.
Photoshop to make textures for my BIM models.
Excel to programme and track RFIs.

And, I play SIMS (for research).





















Credit and thanks:
The picture (in fact the full digital model) of the Hungarian parallel motion was kindly created and provided by Gabor Sūli of Ėptar fame: http://www.eptar.hu/



 

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