Art & Inspiration Drafting and Design - The work and tools

Huh...hadn't seen this thread before today, scootermcrad...'til Choff brought it back up. This stuff is right down my alley. I'm surprised that more guys from Michigan haven't posted, considering that up until the early '90s, there were many many automotive design shops here, especially in the northern suburbs or Detroit...in the cities of Warren, Troy, Sterling Heights, etc. They all did contract work for the "big 3"...mostly tooling. The two main diciplines in design (and manufacturing too) are "product", (the part itself) which was traditionally done in-house by the manufacturers's design departments...and "tooling", (the machines that are used to make, transfer and check the parts) which was nearly always contracted out. My father was an automotive machine-tool designer for most of his life, and I followed in his footsteps. When I was a kid, and I asked my dad what he did at work, he told me he designed "tools". I took it to mean he designed hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers...lol...but I eventually understood what a machine tool is. My dad got me a summer job at a tooling design shop when I was 16 years old. That would've been in 1973...at Liberty Engineering on Dequindre Road just north of 14 mile road in Troy. (for those of you who know the area) Dad sat me down at the kitchen table for a few nights in a row to show me the basics. I hadn't had any drafting classes at all yet. He explained angle brackets, bolt-hole patterns, drilled/reamed/threaded holes, machined surfaces, nut and bolt types and sizes, through holes vs blind holes, demensioning, plan/side/end/sectional views, projecting, fractions and decimal equivalents, line weights, how to do nice looking dimensioning arrows, how to print well, etc. And then off I went. I was thrown in with grown men. Some of these guys were real decent, friendly and helpful, and were a good influence on me...some maybe not so much. It was quite a culture shock for me...lol. I worked at Liberty for two summers...and did take drafting classes in school in my junior and senior years...then worked year-round after I graduated from high school. I skipped past being a blueprint boy. I started as a detailer...drawing and dimensioning small components...mostly simple angle brackets. I started out at $3.00 an hour. Looking back, I'm actually surprised that they even allowed me to work there, I was so inexperienced and slow...lol. But in time, I got better and better. I eventually became a "layout man"... drawing the actual machines from a sketch that a designer had done. I eventually became an actual designer. I met my wife in '87, and worked in the industry for about 25 years.

I did manual design work through my whole career. Back then, we used mechanical pencils, electric sharpeners, triangles, strait-edges, drafting machines, etc...and those badassed electric drill-like erasors. We used to generate piles of erasor shavings...lol. I still have most of my tools. As a layout man and designer I often did 20 and 30 foot drawings. Early on they were paper and sometimes starch-impregnated linen. Later on it was mostly mylar. When doing a full-sized drawing, the plan and front views were often quite long...maybe 10 to 15 feet or more. Most of the tools utilized a square-tube frame, and I'd often find myself actually walking the length of my board to generate the extremely long lines...lol. Most of the time, I'd be "buns up and kneeling" as they used to say...with the bottom of my forearms resting on the board for support. Naturally, (especially when using graphite pencils) the graphite dust would be all over my arms and the front of my shirt. I never had hair on the underside of my forearms during that time, because it was all worn off from rubbing against the lightly textured surface of the paper/vellum/mylar. Back then, we of course generated blueprints to make copies of the drawings. Amonia along with ultraviolet lights were used to activate the chemically impregnated blueprint paper, and the smell of amonia was always in the air around the blueprint machines. One thing that computer aided drawing has over manual drawing is the ability to change an existing design. As mentioned, in the old days we'd have to physically erase lines...and that took time. With the computer drawings, you can do that easily and quickly...and that's a big benifit. But the enviroment of a manual design shop had a character, smell and feel all its own, that's for sure. And I kinda miss it.

I was always interested in mechanical stuff and old cars since I was just a kid. Like most of you, I messed around with an erector set, bicycles, lawnmowers, small engines, and finally cars. I found that my experience with all that helped me to understand the design process. And vice versa, I found that my experience in design helped me to understand cars.

As I mentioned, I worked in design for about 25 years...until shortly after the advent of computers and digital design..."CAD". (computer aided design) The company I worked for at that time began training us in CAD, but then big layoffs came...which wasn't so unusual. There were sometimes short periods of little to no work available during design "change-over". But this layoff continued for quite some time until word finally came through the grapevine that nearly nobody was being called back. The reason?...The big 3 had begun sending the work overseas...basically at the push of a button...through computers and the internet. So that was pretty much the death of manual automotive tooling design...and nearly all automotive tooling design in the Detroit area...and my career. The downturn came much earlier for us than it did for manufacturing. Some of my friends here know that since then, I've struggled to find good work elsewhere. It hasn't been easy. For years I did landscape work, orchard work, painted houses, etc. But I sure didn't make a lot of money. A few years ago, my wife (a nurse for 40 years) suggested that I go to school to become a nurse myself. We had some money saved, so I did that. I had a 1/2 dozen cars and a 25 year collection of vintage parts, but began selling it all to help finance my schooling. I finished my prerequisites...and did quite weill. Meanwhile, I had gotten my CNA (certified nurse's aide) licence, and spent a year away from school to care for the 92 year old couple who lived a couple of farms down the road. After they passed, I entered the actual nursing program. About 3 months in, I started not feeling so great. I was feeling "nervous" and couldn't think straight. I messed up a couple quizzes, and realized I wasn't going to have a high enough grade average to finish out the semester...so I was forced to drop out. A week later I had a heart attack. It took me some time to recuperate. I'm feeling much better these days, but I'm still trying to get myself back on track with work. I've been doing side jobs here and there lately, but I've gotta do better than that. I do have a CDL, (certified driver's licence) and I'll probably be driving truck soon...though I haven't had any luck getting hired yet due to my inexperience. But I have some other possibilities as well. The big 3 eventually found they were having major quality control issues with the overseas-sourced work, and some of the design work has come back...along with manufacturing too. So if I can get some CAD training, I may go back into design...maybe even into the manufacturing sector. I may have an opportunity to work with a friend at an aerospace machine shop. We'll soon see.

Anybody in the Detroit area have a job for Rickybop?

 

Great thread. Can't believe I missed it before.

I'll take some pics tonight of my drafting stuff and post.

 

I am of the split generation. I had all hand drafting in high school and college but took the CAD classes as electives. Once I got out of school I went to work for a small time Architect. I did everything on computer except some initail concept sketches. I like the hand drawing aspect of thing but the computer can crank out drawings faster than by hand. They may not have the feel and raw talent that a hand drawing has but in the real world of production, time is money. I have worked in several engineering fields and Architecture firms. I now work in an engineering department where I am the only CAD guy and go too person for getting drawings done. I have also done some Inventor work in recent years and struggled with it at first. Now it is easier to lay out piping runs and full system designs to make sure they work and there is plenty of room in the areas we are trying to make production work. I went into sales for a few years but this has always been my passion. I like to draw and was headed to the art intitute until me HS art teacher talked my out of it. I have made a career out of drafting and it has always paid the bille. I also have everything from school but no drafting board at home, "YET". Am I the only one who writes in all upper case letters? Most people ask or complain when I write becasue years of lettering I can't go back, ..

Great thread by the way!

 

+1 on what B.Sharp said.

I started out on the board, around 10 years on it, and yes, it you could tell who did the drawing by looking at the line work and lettering without having to look at the title block. It was an art form in itself and I still like looking at the old prints.

With that being said, I have used CAD, first CADAM and now SolidWorks, since '83 and I wouldn't go back to the board for anything. I have been in the energy field and the defense industry and having a 3D model to not only make your drawings from but to analyze your design has saved so much time and money the switch was well worth it. I'm now in the energy service business and design off-shore and land equipment, use the gambit of disciplines from sheet metal, to piping, to running cable, and structual, and more. New products that took several years to design are now down to months. Granted the art isn't there, but the productivity and accuracy is, and that is all the Suits want nowadays.

 

You're not the only one...me too. Short, fat and bold...with a certain flair to it. Learned it from my dad. Some people actually complain? Hey...nobody has better printing than most draftsmen...lol. My dad had quite an artistic talent, and had the coolest printing I've ever seen.

Btw...nobody can shoot rubber bands better than a draftsman too...lol. Small ones...little ones...doesn't matter. We used to have what we called "big reds". You can imagine. Big red ones to bind all the drawings together. Here's a room about the size of 1/2 a football field filled with row after row of 30ft drafting boards. And of course a guy at each one. Everybody's working fairly quietly. You'd be concentrating on your work...head down...and a big rubber band lands lightly on your head. You'd look up and a guy from the faaaaaaaar other end of the room would be lookin' at you and laughing...along with a few others around him...lol.

Ok, I'll share the secret to shooting rubber bands...big or small. You pull it back evenly as anyone else would, but then you (at least I do) catch one side with the back of your thumb and pull that side extra tight. It causes it to spin and slice through the air like a frisbee instead of tumble through it...and they really go...lol.

 

Long nights in studio class also changed my taste in music, I listen too all day. I was an 80's/90's rocker and the older guys all listened to country. Now, I can stand the newer rock and all I listen too is country and 70's rock. Kind of goes hand in hand with the car culture though "60's-70's music".

I have used the rubber band trick before. Funny you should bring that up.

I have done a lot of different veues in my 20 years in the field. I have designed airports, houses/building, parking lots, structural layouts, distillery layouts, piping layouts, etc.. It's funny how they all seem to tie together and some are more challenging than others.

Rickybop, Don't give all our secrets away. LOL....

 

This is funny, I've been working in Architect's offices since 2000, and I have to remember to turn off the caps lock whenever I post on here.

I had an instructor in College that taught me how to throw a pushpin and have it stick into the wall! mind blown...

 

Found some of my Leroy lettering templates and a couple structural models that were used in architectural drawing class.









The models are a little rough after being stored for 40 plus years.

Anybody ever use a Klok perspective drawing board?

 

I started on the drafting board in the early 60's, when to AutoCad 2D 20 years ago, I am now using SolidWorks. I still think in pencil, drafting scale when I am laying out a project. I am redoing my garage and have been trying to find 3D drawing of shop tools such as Bridgeport mill and Hardinge Tool room Lathe plus all other shop tools. I also would like a 3D drawing of 1940 Ford Coupe.
Enjoyed reading everyone resumes.

 

I started on the "Board" too for about 12 years then to Acad Pro-E and SDRC I-Deas. I worked in the sheet metal cab group of White Motors as a contractor "rental" in the late 70's. Fullsize drawings. My drawing board was 6' x 12" 1-1/2" thick flat. I would walk around it drawing upside down and sideways. It was on a grid with all three views on top of each other. The body sweep templates were aluminum and hung in a closet like cabinet.

Metric was just starting to work it's way in. There was a guy who had to have every new drafting tool or template there was. We had this guy going nuts because we told him he had to go out and buy new "metric" angles, compasses, and protractors. I was a week before he caught on.

How about pencil lead in the eraser bag trick?

 

I have made the wife angry a few times because she said I was yelling at her in emails. I had no idea what she was talking about until she said all caps meant you were angry and yelling. I had to explain that all notes were capital in autocad and I just forgot to turn caps off. Now she just makes fun of me when I forget. Lol. I'm not much on email edicut..

 

I had to wade in on this thread, being a "board" old schooler. Took my first drafting classes at El Camino College in Manhattan Beach about '65 while I was a toolmaker at North American Aviation (Later Rockwell). My instructor saw my enthusiasm and talent, so he hooked me up at first drafting job at a marine architect company in Pedro. It was all gravy and (mostly) good jobs from there. So Cal was popping then and switching jobs for another .50 an hour was never a risk. I always considered Tech Illustrators were the prima donnas, best in the craft. Only the biggest companies could afford them because of the limited applications for their work: usually instruction sheets, manuals, advertising, etc. I worked at Superior Industries in Van Nuys for a few years in late '60's, early '70's. They were (are?) in auto parts biz (best steering wheels made, way better then Grant, Cragar,etc.) My boss was Skip Hess the gasser pilot of Shores & Hess Anglia fame. Skip is a very smart man (degreed Mechanical Eng.) His boss and V.P. of Product Development was Ray Brown, original SCTA member and lakes racer. I was in famous company. I got to do a lot of auto parts and road wheel drawings. It was cool!
Finally years later wound up at Douglas Long Beach working on C-17, one of the last of the "old ones" still humped over the board with my draftman's knot elbows. CAD was becoming the industry engineering tool. CAD time was limited, so only permanent employees got school and seat time. (I was a job shopper then.)
I hung in the biz for about another 10 years as I finally moved into Auto Cad, etc. But I knew I was being fazed out by young guys who were learning CAD and solid modeling in college. Sometimes I had to whip out " a fast sketch (Ha!)" to get to the shop, so I'd draw one up and the guys in the shop loved it! Where did you learn to do that? Older Master Machinists knew I was in their house because hand drafting was a dying art form.
Some where I have a isometric skeleton/exposed view of the DC-3 made by a '50's illustrator at Douglas. It is a beauty - so much detail!
I know this was long but I enjoyed doing it all and telling it. I was drawing cars in High School and couldn't stop. If you like to draw, don't stop!

 

I owned the drafting table used by the head engineer at Allis Chalmers in the 60's. It was 8' long with a massive sliding Brunig system. It took up so much space I gave it to a young girl who uses it every day designing custom homes.

Boy are those nice! It was an art form. I own vintage drafting college books from the 1800's up to about the 50's. It took 15 years to collect them, very enjoyable reading.

Periodically on eBay you'll see mechanical design and drafting books used in schools for sale pretty cheap, many from the 30's and 40's and they fetch about $15 maybe? Worth every penny. I highly recommend buying one.

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I have a 4' X 6' Hamilton tilt drafting table and a K&E drafting machine with 24" scales.

 

everytime i see a hand drawn sketch of a building, mech. part, etc .... its like an lost or almost forgotten work of art

not everyone does it nowadays. alot of people relay on computer apps. for this kind of work now ( as in solidworks, autoCAD, revit, etc ... )

makes for little mess and paper waste tho .....

i just love seeing drafting tools and techniques ...

 

Or a piece or two of pencil lead pushed into an erasor...lol.

Concerning the design work itself, it's kinda funny that sometimes, a design looks perfectly feasible on paper, but in reality it just won't work. And nobody knows that better than the machine-tool builders. Once in a while, we'd get a drawing back from the build shop, because we drew something that was simply impossible to do. Sometimes, the build shop was in the same building as the design department. It was actually the best setup, because the design and build guys had good communication. Periodically, a build shop employee would come to us with a drawing in-hand...lay it out on someone's board and ask, "Wtf is this supposed to be?!?...lol.

One time, when I was just starting as an actual "designer", and was working directly under a senior designer...at a board adjacent to his...I designed a threaded adjustment shaft. Only problem was, I had threads only in the middle portion of the shaft! "Ed" was looking over my work and said, "Uh, Rick...I don't think this is gonna work." Oops...I felt a little stupid of course. But what he failed to mention, and I later realized, was that it wasn't such a big fk-up ...the ends of the shaft could've easily been turned down and it would've worked just fine.

 

LOL !!!!I get the same crap form our salesmen hear at the shop !!! They say stop yelling !!! Dont know about you guys but I print ( struggle even signing my name ) because its all I am used to doing, funny thing was that in school eveyone wanted my notes because they were easier to read. Can print as fast as most people can write cursef

 

I know that feeling all too well... "Well it worked in Solidworks!"


At work, I still like to sketch out a design on paper first then go at it full throttle in Solidworks.

At home on my projects, I keep a pad of engineering paper, lead holder, eraser, rulers, etc. and sketch up designs old school style. To me, it's zen-like when making sketches with paper and pencil instead of staring at a computer screen.

 

Reading this brings back a lot of memories, started in the aircraft industry in 1960 as a basic draftsman on a 10' drafting board using Mylar and velum and kept moving up until I was a layout Designer, all of our drawings were drawn full scale with a max of .010 of an inch tolerance. I still have most of my tools including my 24" Stainless steal Scale with 100 graduations per inch that cost $24.00 in 1960. Then in 71 the bottom fell out out and never came back. Changed over to sheet metal design for a year then to Civil for the rest of my working carer, retired in 2007, the last 5 years was Auto Cad and Micro station, got pretty good at it, at first tried to draw like it was a board which takes way too long, finially learned how to speed things up. Speaking of rubber bands, an Architects scale with one corner filed at the correct angle will allow the rubber band to be pulled from a notch in the front to the slopped rear surface and placed upon an eraser for elevation will allow you to stand talking to the person when the rubber band finally slides over the top and launches striking him. You pretend that you are surprised that someone shot him with the rubber band.

 

Glad to see so much enthusiasm still out there for drafting on the board.
Don't forget that early draftsman (even into the '50's) used to wear shorty aprons and visors! I remember seeing some of the white haired guys at North American (probably from before WWII ) who no doubt worked on P-51s and bombers, wearing aprons, visors, bowties and white shirts which was the standard engineering uniform.
You young guys will never witness the "bullpen", the sea of drawing boards into the distance. Most using great rolls of vellum and scrolling up as you moved along your project. Everything was drawn 1:1, full size, or "one up", where possible.
The hardest thing to transition to CAD was looking at that little screen and trying to grasp what the actual size of something was! Everything went to X, Y, & Z. No more frames and waterlines.
Glad my 239 CU IN flathead in my Shoebox hasn't changed !

 

I'd almost kill to see a detailed pic of Rex Burnett's perspective platen he used to layout his cutaway drawings? There's a thumbnail-sized pic in The Rodders Journal that featured his works,but it's awfully small?
Anyone?

 

Very interesting thread. There seems to be several M.E.s, programmers, machinists and maybe even an Engineer or two on here.

I still have a K&E and table that was my dad's and then mine. I first used it for school projects and then eventually earned money off it scaling and "trigging" for MDI programs. That was 27 years ago. We only had one NC and not a single PC or post-processor in the shop. I didn't program long enough to use the new technologies. APT and mylar tapes were the technology at the large companies.

The last time I had it set up, was on a stand made from rough cedar limbs. It matched my rustic cabin.

Is there a correlation between old cars and old machinists?

 

My favorite French Curve

 

Quite a few guys continued using aprons until manual drafting wasn't used anymore. It was actually the smart thing to do, because you'd constantly be rubbing against the front edge of the board, and it'd eventually tear up the front of your pants. White (and later, colored) dress shirts and ties were worn until jeans and stuff became accepted...I'd say somewhere around the early '70s...about the time I started. Drafting shops were always equipped with lots of fluorescent lights, which could wear on the eyes a bit. So I can see the benefit of a visor. I hardly saw anybody using them during my time, though it wasn't unheard of.

Yup, mostly full-sized drawings...sometimes 1/2-sized for the very large machines. And those 20-30ft drawings would get rolled and unrolled and take a set...they'd wanna roll up on their own. A lot of us used two boards...one to draw on and one behind us for all the blueprints and reference drawings...and we'd sometimes have multiples stacked on the board behind us. You can imagine how difficult they could be to manage, 'cause they'd wanna roll up all by themselves...so we used paper weights...no little 1-2lb deals...big ones. Guys would get inventive and use any number of different things for weights...as long as they were heavy. I remember my dad finally got fed up trying to use multiple lighter weights...the drawings would still wanna roll up...with the little weights inside them! So he had his buddy make two of 'em out of 4"X4"X8"lg solid steel. Painted 'em, glued some felt to the bottom, a heavy duty drawer-pull on top for a handle...and no more problem...lol.

Sometimes the tool design shops (or "job shops" as we called 'em) that we worked for were responsible for designing a whole line...or a series of lines...each consisting of multiple machines to do a particular job. This was called a "program". You can imagine the number of drawings for a complete program. The layouts, (the drawings of each entire machine itself) usually consisting of 3 or 4 30ft drawings showing the plan, side, end and all the sectional views. Also all the large and small detail-drawings (with all the necessary dimensions) of each separate fabricated component...fabbed brackets and frames, (weldments) and all the shafts, levers, etc. And we can't forget the stacks of 8 1/2" x 11" stock lists of all the steel stock and all the standard purchased components used...bearings, drive-belts and chains, conveyer belts, switches, springs, fasteners, etc.

All these machines had to be sketched, laid out, and detailed. Then all the drawings had to be checked, changed, and checked again. Then there'd sometimes be a change in the design of the actual part that was to be manufactured...and all the drawings done to date would have to again be changed, checked, changed and checked again.

Finally, after months and months...sometimes a year or more...the completed design for the entire program was ready to go out the door. Heavy bundles of rolls and rolls of drawings all bound together with big-assed rubberbands. It was a fairly momentous occasion for the whole design team...the culmination of lots of head-scratching, discussions, (and bitching) and drawing and re-drawing. A lot of work by maybe 50-100 "toolies"...all done.

And if we were lucky, there'd be another long-term program waiting in the wings. If not...pack your tools and go looking to move to wherever the work was. I must've worked for 10 or more different job shops over the course of my career...some, 2 or 3 times. <!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

 

One of the problems with Aircraft design and Highway design is the lead time from finished drawings to finished product. From start of the program to finished product usually took five years or more in the aircraft industry, by that time you were either on another project or with another company. With sheet metal design things went much faster, even hospital casework was built and installed in less time than five years. If it was rehab work in about six months you could tour the site and see what you had designed installed and used was almost like instant gratification.

 

... you would be surprised just how many degreed and/or licensed engineers are on this board...

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Licensed engineer here. Starting working as pencil/mylar draftsman in 1968 for $2.00/hr. My old T square, slide rule and compass are hanging on the wall over my computer right now as I clicked out of my current AutoCad drawing to take a peek at this thread

 

RICKYBOP: "Guys would get inventive and use any number of different things for weights...as long as they were heavy. I remember my dad finally got fed up trying to use multiple lighter weights...the drawings would still wanna roll up...with the little weights inside them! So he had his buddy make two of 'em out of 4"X4"X8"lg solid steel. Painted 'em, glued some felt to the bottom, a heavy duty drawer-pull on top for a handle...and no more problem...lol."
Some of you older Aircraft dudes may recall they used to do "LOFTING" which was laying out long sweeping curves for wings, fairings, fuselage, etc. Well, there were big 2-3 lb weights with a little hook on the end for keeping a dummy line in place. These were called "DUCKS". I never did any lofting, but snatching a DUCK once in awhile was a prized possession for keeping those unruly scrolls in place. I understand they also used lofting in marine architecture for hull design. I would even guess automotive design, maybe from the '50s when cars had stylized shapes & fins. Any of you Detroit/Mich guys use lofting?

 

Architect by training and still do all my design work on the boards, (part time now as architecture is a hard way to make a living). The MEP guys I use send me their CAD drawings as pdf's and I just insert them in the the set.
I got out of the day to day architecture world just as CAD was starting to take off. Spent some time using AutoCad and Arris. Never liked the sterile look of the drawings so I never invested in the software for myself.
I've got more lead holder, pointers, velvet lined compass boxes that I just love to get out and use. (working on a new garage addition for my self this week as a matter of fact.)
Kids today don't understand line weight or basic graphic representation.