Wind & Sky

Drawing from Memory

A friend, Michael, recently shared a post on Facebook from the account History pictures about drafting in the pre-CAD days. It brought back a rush of memories I hadn’t revisited in years. They were fond memories so I thought I would share it here along with some thoughts for the future.

From Square One

Michael was sharing the post because it brought back memories for him of taking drafting in 7th grade. Like Michael, my journey with technical drawing started in school. I took a semester of Drafting in my senior year. Not only did I enjoy the class, but it created a new connection with my Dad.

Although his job as a telephone switching office manager didn't involve drafting, he had taken classes at technical school that involved creating electrical diagrams. He passed down his drafting square and mechanical pencils to me - and I still have that square today!

After high school and a year of college, I joined the U.S. Navy, though that's a story for another time. After the Navy, I had dreams of becoming an architect. While full-time college wasn't financially feasible, and pursuing an architecture degree part-time wasn't practical, I found a middle ground after we returned to Texas: going back to Eastfield College. Taking evening classes while working during the day, I pursued an Associate Degree in Drafting & Design. Here are some examples of some of my schoolwork.

Isometric Drawing

Electrical Diagram

An Early CAD Drawing

Digital Horizons

Computervision CADDS3
by Arnold Reinhold

At Eastfield, I did a good bit of hand drafting but I also studied computer aided drafting and design (CADD) systems. Eastfield had a ComputerVision system called CADDS that was my first experience with drafting with computers and only the second time I had worked with a computer (the first being a semester-long introductory class in high school). CADDS was a complex beast with a steep learning curve, at least for someone new to the technology. Our teacher had war stories of working on the prior generations of CADD systems where he had to create designs using punch cards. I'm glad that was before my time!

What was new and upcoming, though? AutoCAD. Eastfield had set up a small lab with a handful of PCs running MS-DOS and AutoCAD. It was an exciting advancement, even in its early versions. AutoCAD is what really got me excited about CADD. I left drafting and CADD behind professionally almost 35 years ago, but these days I still use AutoDesk software: I've created or modified several designs using the free version of Fusion 360 for objects to create with a 3D printer.

Early version of AutoCAD

Current version of Fusion 360

Breaking New Ground

My degree gave me the foundation I needed to start working in CADD professionally, and one remarkable connection opened the right door. Thanks to Mom's close friend Virginia Helton, PE, I landed a position at the Texas Department of Highways and Public Transportation (now TxDOT) as a CADD technician. Virginia's story was pioneering – when she received her engineering license, she was one of only three women among 700 civil engineers in Texas. By the time I joined the Highway Department, the gender balance was slowly improving but still had a long way to go. Although I never worked directly with Virginia, her role in launching my CADD career gave me a deep appreciation for those who break barriers and help others follow.

Intergraph Workstation

Once I joined the Highway Department, I felt like I had joined the big leagues. They used CADD systems from Intergraph. From its early days creating software for missile guidance systems for NASA, Intergraph had grown to a major provider of CADD hardware and software. The Texas Highway Department was an early adopter of Intergraph CADD workstations due to the company's advances in mapping technology, a key function for civil engineering.

The Intergraph workstation I used was large, with two monitors, a large digitizing table, a puck (like a wheel-less mouse) and a keyboard. It ran software called Interactive Graphics and Design System (IGDS). Under the monitors was a large cabinet that had the local computing hardware. The workstation was connected to a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX 11/785 minicomputer located in the regional data center across the parking lot.

Projects That Left Their Mark

In some cases I was taking working notes from an engineer and creating a set of engineering drawings (eventually to be printed as blueprints) and in other cases I was taking older, hand-drawn designs and copying them into the computer to be referenced or updated (essentially, laying them out on the digitizing table and tracing them with the CADD system). I don't recall everything I worked on - some were small projects and some were large - but a few stuck with me.

Have you ever driven under SH114 on O'Connor Blvd in Los Colinas? I drew the civil engineering designs for the update done to that interchange in the mid-80s.
Remember what Central Expressway was like before the major expansion in the 90s? Much of the actual engineering work on that project was subcontracted out to commercial engineering firms but the right of way maps, the plans that showed where we could build, were done by the Highway Department.
Towards the end of my 5 years with the Highway Department, I'd moved to the Right of Way Division. Although the engineer who brought me over did so because of my growing reputation for having (self-taught) programming skills, I still had drafting duties, one of which involved working on the new right of way maps for the Central Expressway.

Back to the Drawing Board

While my day job at the Highway Department involved computer-aided design, my drafting pencils weren't gathering dust. I landed an interesting freelance opportunity that would put my hand-drafting skills to work. The project involved creating architectural design drawings for a large house in Garland - one with its own interesting story. The original owner, a guy I was told had a string of dry cleaning businesses and a large family, had commissioned the house but then ended up going into bankruptcy. The bank took possession of the house and hired a general contractor to finish it and get it sold.

A lifelong friend Neil Kirkpatrick, who had the contract to build the backyard fences, referred me to the general contractor who wanted to use architectural sketches instead of photos in the marketing materials. I visited the house several times and worked with the original blueprints and my site notes to create the drawings. At the time, I was a little frustrated that they wanted everything done by hand instead of using CADD but looking back it was a long, hard project that was very rewarding (at least in terms of personal satisfaction - I don't recall what I got paid but it wasn't all that much).

Sketching the Future

A lot has changed in the last 40 years. My journey from mechanical pencils to massive CADD workstations to lightweight design software like Fusion 360 mirrors the broader evolution of technical drawing. But even those advances seem incremental compared to what's happening now – consider the image at the top of this blog, which wasn't drawn by hand or even designed with software, but generated by AI. While we can't yet speak designs into existence through CADD systems, that future feels surprisingly close.

Is that a bad thing? I'll leave each of you to decide that for yourselves. But after four decades in technology, including my transition from drafter to programmer to architect, I can offer two perspectives.

First, my transition from CADD technician to programmer was driven by a realization: as much as I enjoyed the creative outlet of drafting, I was beginning to feel like I was just translating others' ideas rather than creating my own. I wanted to be the person responsible for the real innovation, which led me to software development and technology architecture. Had I not aspired to move into a creator role, technological evolution might have eventually eliminated my position entirely, as happened to many who were content in their existing roles. This mirrors a larger shift we've seen - just as word processing eventually led to business people writing their own materials instead of dictating to secretaries, computer aided design has evolved to where engineers can directly translate their vision into reality.

Second, I recall what a senior engineer at the Highway Department told me about CADD adoption. He noted that while computers didn't necessarily help them create better engineering drawings than by hand, they could iterate designs so quickly that in the time it previously took to do a hand-drawn version, they could refine a design multiple times - resulting in more efficient, safer, and more cost-effective solutions.

These transformative forces - the democratization of tools and the acceleration of iteration - are now being amplified by AI in ways we're just beginning to understand. The AI image in the header of this blog hints at what's coming. While we might not yet fully design via conversation, it may be just around the corner. And when it arrives, instead of replacing creativity it will hopefully remove barriers between imagination and implementation, just as past advances have done.

Postscripts

For those of you who aren't familiar with computer-aided graphics, you may be wondering "what's CAD vs. CADD"? Computer Aided Design (CAD) is a more generalized term for the technology and function. Computer Aided Drafting and Design (CADD) really harkens back to the days I've discussed above when draftsmen (and women) transcribed the work of an engineer into drawings.

For those of you who are fans of the British comedy from the 70s, Monty Python's Flying Circus, you will have caught that besides the title of this post highlighting it is a departure from the topics I usually cover here, it is also the catch phrase from this classic show. To close out, here is the trailer from the film of the same title.

AI generated graphic with question mark, meteors, satellites and planes

Created with Dall-E

If you've taken a photo of the night sky, whether with a camera or your phone, you may find it contains a few unexpected streaks. Think you captured a meteor? Or that comet you've read about in the news lately? While it could be one of those, it might also be something else.

People post questions about this so often in places like Facebook that I wrote about it last year. Now, I'm posting an update, focusing on how to quickly identify what you've captured; the details of why are in the earlier post.

Length?

First, how long was your exposure? If it was just a few seconds or even a fraction of a second, any streak will be relatively short, and its length may not be much help in identifying what caused it. However, if it was a long exposure—5 seconds, 10, or even longer—a short streak may be a meteor as they only last a fraction of a second, but a long streak is more likely an airplane or a satellite.

Dots?

Next, is the streak solid, or is it a line with dots? If there are dots, it is most likely an airplane. If there are multiple parallel lines with dots, the aircraft is flying at a relatively low altitude.

Shape?

No dots? What do the ends look like? If both ends are blunt, then what you've captured is most likely a satellite. Larger satellites (like the ISS) will leave a thicker trail. If only one end is blunt but the other is tapered, or both ends are tapered, you might have caught a satellite passing in or out of Earth's shadow, fading into or out of view.

Meteors generally also have tapered ends though usually starting very thin, getting gradually thicker and then quickly coming to a point at the end of its journey.

Frames?

If you took multiple, successive photos and the streak only appears in one frame, that's another sign it is probably a meteor. If it shows up in more than one image, then it's either an airplane (any dots?) or it is a satellite.

Color?

If the streak has noticeable color, especially different colors along its length, then it is probably a meteor. With aircraft there may be colors but the streaks are a constant color and the dots generally differ in color from the streaks. With satellites, there's usually no discernible color as they just reflect sunlight.