Lost professions and skills - Technical Drawing

[Harrison]

My son is in year 9 of secondary school at the moment and has been doing perspective drawing and some other types of technical drawing. But just on a sketchpad with a ruler. He's quite good at art and drawing, which he gets from us as we are both artists (but he isn't that interested).

This got me thinking about Technical Drawing. In the 1980s when I was at school it was a separate subject. We had rooms full of proper technical drawing boards with parallel motion bars for use with drawing tools. This was my favourite subject at school and I continued this on to A-Level Graphical Communication.

I have forgotten a lot of the techniques we were taught at the higher level, especially the architectural drawing ones such as calculating the load on a roof and things like that, but still like to do Orthographic drawings, Orthographic projection and 3D 2 point perspective drawing. I still have an A9 drawing board with parallel motion and also used to use an airbrush a lot, but not recently. I should get back into that.

I was talking to my son about this and he said they don't have drawing tables like that in school any more. This got me thinking about the core skills you learn doing technical drawing that lead into a lot of professions. It's really useful for 3D programs as the skills you get from orthographic drawing translate directly to 3D modelling, Architects and engineers also use such drawing skills (mostly computer bases these days).

So is the skill of manual technical drawing dead professionally now for those at school? Is it becoming a lost profession?

What other skills and subjects are lost or no longer taught in schools?

[Stephen Coates]

We never did technical drawing at school and I don't remember us having the facilities for it. We did have some limited CAD software though which people used in various D&T subjects.

They did quite a few CAD courses at the college I went to, and I think they did still teach some manual drawing stuff back then, but I never did that I was studying electronics so it wasn't very applicable. I doubt they do now, in fact, I not even sure if they do CAD courses or electronics courses anymore.

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This reminds me... What's ICT/Computers like in schools nowadays?

When I was at school ICT was one of the most boring subjects there was.

[Kin Hell]

Tech Drawing.....

It's all about age when it comes to schooling these days. Back in the late 70's, I fluffed my first pass at GCSE's (O-Levels) and had to go into sixth form in the 80's for re-takes. - I ditched Economics for Tech Drawing entering the Sixth form and got a CSE Grade 2 for it over a CSE 5 in Economics.

Eventually, I went back to College in 1993 to 1994 during the Thatcher recession & studied for an HND in Mechanical/Electrical Engineering. - I got 100% in my Tech Drawing exam for that course & my drawings for the Exam were put in the display cabinets in Gloucestershire's Stroud College of Further Education as an example of what can be achieved.

So, bragging aside, those days of boards with paper clipped to; And lateral slide-rules were discarded for computers with 2.5D displays. - Isometric views using 30 & 60 degree angles to the perpendicular were now obsolete.

I remember Tech Drawing back in the 70's & 80's was an important part of Engineering & whilst doing that course back in 1993, I was annoyed that there were not enough computers available in the college to get my final presentation paperwork together for my HND requirements.

My course Tutor allowed me to take my A4000D into the IT room at Stroud College...

Everyone that saw me rendering an Imagine 3 image whilst using Final Writer for typing & printing my work to the IT rooms Deskjet 500 printers, whilst formatting a floppy drive & hard drive partition all at the same time in a true Multi-Tasking environment, were truly gob-smacked! - I didn't get a 100% score from my course Tutor for all that crap...I got it for definition of pencil thickness, construction lines & overall presentation of my drawings.

Playing Pinball Fantasies at the same time as doing all above, was just the icing on the cake!

I haven't forgotten those Technical skills because I tied them in with a good understanding of Pythagoras, the Sine & Cosine rules of triangles & can still calculate development lengths for sheet metal work to this day. Advanced A Level maths on the end of that 1993 HND meant I could have taken a 3 year Degree but Divorce got in the way in 1994 & life took a different direction.

What other skills and subjects are lost or no longer taught in schools?

Common sense!

[Harrison]

I definitely don't think technical drawing skills are obsolete. Illustrators and artists use many of the techniques, as do animators, and there are still airbrush artists that use traditional skills. But as they are not even introduced in school, let alone taught, children today don't even become interested in the possibility. But this got me thinking because my son was being taught single point perspective in CDT just using a ruler and I commented to him that he could use my drawing board and it would be far easier. He refused and stubbornly continued on the dining room table with a ruler.

And like handwriting I think the focus on computer based skills is wrong. Everyone should have the basic manual skills first before progressing to computer based ones. For me technical drawing was a key skill set and the understanding of more advanced parts were essential for both vector art in software such as Illustrator and for 3D modeling in 3D rendering packages such as Lightwave and Cinema 4D at the time, and later professionally in 3DSMax and Maya. I would also argue that orthographic projection is still very much a core part of 3D modelling and post production work on a 3D space. It's like trying to teach programing without any understanding of Maths.

[Harrison]

I got 100% in my Tech Drawing exam for that course & my drawings for the Exam were put in the display cabinets in Gloucestershire's Stroud College of Further Education as an example of what can be achieved.

Very nice. I got 98% on my A-Level in Graphical Communication, which covered advanced technical drawing with everything from architectural load design to the mapping of the intersection points of 2 objects. My tutor told me I got the highest A-Level score in the country, and received an award.. which turned out to be a ?20 book token. Better than nothing though. Used to to buy a book on airbrush techniques.

Regarding technical drawing, I was recently looking online to see what resources were still available. I still have and use a set of Rotring refillable technical drawing pens and their other equipment, and these are all still available, so there is still a demand. The Rotring pens are obviously also still used by illustrators and line artists.