Architectural Drawing - Drafting

Drafting

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, all architectural drawings were manually produced, either by architects or by trained (but less skilled) draughtsmen (or drafters), who did not generate the design, although they made many of the less important decisions. This system continues with CAD draughting: many design architects have little or no knowledge of CAD software programmes and rely upon others to take their designs beyond the sketch stage. Draughtsmen may specialize in a type of structure, such as residential or commercial, or in a type of construction: timber frame, reinforced concrete, prefabrication etc.

The traditional tools of the architect were the drawing board or draughting table, T-square and set squares, protractor, compasses, pencil and drawing pens of different types. Drawings were made on vellum, coated linen, and on tracing paper. Lettering would either be done by hand, mechanically using a stencil, or a combination of the two. Ink lines were drawn with a ruling pen, a relatively sophisticated device similar to a dip-in pen but with adjustable line width, capable of producing a very fine controlled line width. Ink pens had to be dipped into ink frequently. Draughtsmen worked standing up, and kept the ink on a separate table to avoid spilling ink on the drawing.

Twentieth century developments include the parallel motion drawing board, and more complicated improvements on the basic T-square. The development of reliable technical drawing pens allowed for faster draughting and stencilled lettering. Letraset dry transfer lettering and half-tone sheets were popular from the 1970s until computers made those processes obsolete.