Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote in
:


Actually you start off with simple mechanical drawings, drafting is a
very strict style of drawing with lots of tricks and rules.
We never sketched anything in preparation of drawing what would be the
finished drawing. The drawing required preparation so that it would
be centered properly on the sheet of paper. Basically you started
with determining the over all size of the object being drawn and that
gave you a starting point for each view. I don't recall the formula
but there was on used to center isometric drawings on the sheet.

And as Larry has indicated once you have done a load of those properly
structured drawings, sketching free hand seems to come naturally. You
develope a very keen eye for things that stick out in a tool assisted
mechanical drawing which dont look right. You find your self
comparing lines that should be parallel or perpendicular. As you
start sketching you do the same thing and quickly make corrections as
you sketch those lines.


My experience agrees with this. I spend quite a bit of my planning time
sketching things based on what little I learned in high school about
drafting. I keep a spiral bound notebook around the shop so I can have
something to draw/sketch/figure on. (Other than the workbench. ;-))

Often, I'll only bother with showing the interesting (complicated) part
of the piece I'm working on. No need to show the joinery on all four
corners when it's all the same.

Puckdropper