My boss took one look at my floor plan and said 'you're dimensioning everything twice' and I had been doing that for 4 years straight without noticing.

After he showed me the standard practice for reference dimensions, I saved about 30 minutes per drawing set and I'm wondering how many other basic drafting rules I'm still messing up, has anyone else had a senior drafter catch some dumb habit you never questioned?

2 comments

2 Comments

val_taylor5d ago

Wait, you dimensioned everything twice for 4 years and nobody caught it sooner? That's brutal but honestly I bet half of us have some weird habit we picked up from watching the wrong person. I had a senior check my work once and he pointed out I was putting all my dimensions on the wrong side of the extension lines (you know, the side where they overlap with other lines), and I had been doing it since college because that's just how my professor showed us. It's crazy how those little things slip through, especially when you're just trying to get through the day and nobody questions your process. What's worse is when you realize you've been making extra work for yourself without even knowing it, like you could have been done 30 minutes earlier this whole time. At least now you know, and honestly that's the scary part about drafting - there's always some tiny rule you never learned.

kim.hannah5d ago

The real trick nobody talks about is that standard practice for dimensions changes depending on what field you're in. Structural steel guys dimension everything completely different than MEP folks, and my buddy from a civil firm nearly had a meltdown seeing our way of doing things. Maybe check if the old blueprints in your office were done by someone from a different discipline, that's how bad habits sneak in without anyone catching them.