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A talk with an old architect in Denver made me question my whole detail drawing process

He looked at a set of my MEP plans and said 'You're drawing every single pipe like it's a work of art, but the guy in the field just needs to know where it goes and what size it is.' I'd been adding so much extra linework for 'clarity' that it was actually making the sheets harder to read. Has anyone else had a mentor tell them to simplify their drafting style?

2 comments

2 Comments

fisher.reese23d ago

Man, that hits home. A buddy of mine was doing the same thing with structural details, drawing every rebar tie like a masterpiece. His boss finally took him to a job site, handed the prints to a foreman, and asked how long to set the cages. The foreman just squinted at the page and said, "I can't tell what's what in this mess." My friend said it was like a bucket of cold water got dumped on his head. He learned fast that a clean, simple drawing gets the work done right.

kelly.parker23d ago

You ever think maybe the problem isn't the detail, but how it's organized? That foreman squinting at a messy page is looking at a failure of sheet layout, not a failure of information. If you layer things right and use line weights properly, you can show every rebar tie and still have it read clean. Dumbing down drawings just passes the problem to the field to figure out.

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