Old K says every week – talking about things in the petrochemical design industry; Post 3: The development of drafting techniques in design firms

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This post was last edited by henglinkou on 2020-6-26 at 15:44. Old K’s weekly series – Talks about matters in the petrochemical design industry, Post 3: The development of drawing techniques in design institutes. The development of drawing techniques in design institutes can generally be divided into two stages: manual drawing before the 1990s, and computer-based drawing that gradually emerged after that decade. Those who started working at design institutes before around 1994 will still remember that upon joining, one had to receive drawing tools, which included drawing boards, straightedges, set squares, triangles, drafting templates, drawing pens, compasses, erasers, calculators, and so on. The drawing board specifications include Type 1 and Type 0 boards, with Type 1 being more commonly used ； Ruler and T-square; generally, the ruler is used more often. The ruler is fixed to the drawing board and can move up and down ； Set squares include 60-degree right-angled set squares and isosceles right-angled set squares ； The electrical worker’s template is rectangular in shape, with many small hollow shapes such as circles, triangles, and squares in it, to facilitate the drawing of various small figures ； Drawing pens are usually sold in sets of three, with three different widths: 0.3, 0.6, and 1.2. The process of creating hand-drawn illustrations from conception to the final product is roughly as follows: 1) The designer manually sketches out ideas ； 2) The designer draws officially on the white drawing paper ； 3) Proofreading and review ； 4) The designer modifies the drawings based on the review comments ； 5) The drawings are sent to the draftsman to be transferred onto transparent vellum paper ； 6) After the drawings are signed, they are sent to the plotting station to produce the final version. The true widespread use of computer graphics came around after 1996 ； Before 1990, design institutes generally already had dedicated computer stations, with several computers placed in air-conditioned rooms and managed by specialized staff; people entering those computer rooms had to change their shoes. The primary function of these computers was for performing calculations. At that time, some design institutes sent people to the West to learn computer-aided drawing ； The period from 1990 to 1996 was roughly a transitional stage; with the advancement of computer hardware and software technologies, computers were gradually used for drawing, and eventually one computer became available to each person. Today, computer-aided drawing technology has reached a mature stage, with some having evolved from 2D drawing to 3D modeling. Computer-aided drawing has improved work efficiency and quality. In my opinion, the next step in development should focus on standardization and modularization in order to minimize repetitive tasks; this requires coordinated efforts at a **higher level to carry out such work.