Pencil question

I've seen those drafting departments. I wish I had the local laundry franchise.

Somebody (Gerry, I think) mentioned cigarette filters. My Staedtler sharpener has one in a pocket in the top of the device. One filter is good for a year or two. I still use those lead holders when I'm editing in pencil; they're especially good in red and blue.

I used to love the craft of it. I did a lot of architectural drawing around

35 years ago, and I spent endless hours practicing architectural lettering -- a limited enterprise, because only certain architectural fonts are practical for lefties. My pre-war Dietzgen drafting set was the envy of the classroom.

However, although I'm strictly an amateur with CAD (I've used GenericCADD, Cadkey, AutoCAD, Vellum, Rhino, and several others), I wouldn't trade my computer for the best traditional drafting equipment ever made.

-- Ed Huntress

Complete and total agreement, Ed.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in rec.crafts.metalworking:

Now THERE is a REAL Treasure!!!!!!!!!

IIWY, I'd get it appraised BUT that appraiser would have to agree to do the appraisal while I had a loaded 1911 in my hand...

Forget jewelry, that set's worth a major mint!

Larry Jaques wrote in rec.crafts.metalworking:

Amen, Bro', Amen!

That would be my Colt-manufactured model, original Parkerizing, made in

1941.

I'll keep it with the family silver. There's a Paul Revere piece in there. We never let stuff go.

-- Ed Huntress

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:59:27 -0400, the infamous Gerald Miller scrawled the following:

So you're a Freddie Jones lookalike, are ya?

-- Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass; it's about learning how to dance in the rain. --Anon

Beg to disagree. It is also intrinsically more accurate, its ability to do geometry and trig can be a huge convenience, and one need not be a professional CAD operator for it to be significantly faster.

I've used and still have the traditional drafting tools and skills. I worked as a draftsman/detailer at Chevy Engineering back in the '60's, white shirt and all.

I find CAD both faster and more accurate, even when making orhtographic projections, true views and suchlike. I use an ancient version of AutoCAD (R-14) because I invested the time to become fairly facile and comfortable with it years ago. I agree with others that ACAD has its warts and is not easy to learn, but it's as familiar as a pencil to me.

The fastest pro operators do much or most of their work with keyboard rather than mouse, or at least that was once the case. People can type a hell of a lot faster than they can mouse. Watching a real pro make a drawing "happen" with ACAD is quite a show. I seriously doubt that anyone could do it nearly as quickly with conventional drafting tools. It would take a fast sketcher to keep up.

Don, it pains me to say it, but this thread proves we are turning/have turned into a bunch of old farts, lamenting the "good old days"........ (I include myself in this, just had my 56 birthday)

Andrew VK3BFA.

Sounds like you're a 'Wookie Wannabe'. ;-)

Any year that 'you' are in is odd... ;-)

Have you ever tried 'SwitcherCad'? It is a Spice program you can download for free from Linear Technology.

I haven't, but I'm a registered Rhino user and I've settled on that for the little bit of work I do with it these days. I did try an early version of Spice for electronic design, but it's been years since I was involved in ham radio.

I was one of the first beta testers for Rhino and I've stuck with it.

-- Ed Huntress KC2NZT

This reminds me of a contest reported when electronic calculators first came out. The contest, in Japan, pitted an 80-something with abacus against a 20-something with calculator. The geezer won hands down, of course. He'd been practicing longer than the kid had been alive.

But if they had been asked to compute the sine of 27 degrees or the log of 7689, the kid would win (if he had the right calculator).

Joe Gwinn

(...)

Second the motion. LTSpice is the best kept secret on the web. It is free and works nearly as well as the $K simulators like Cadence PSpice (Which I love but cannot afford.)

I've designed and simulated several circuits in LTSpice including some that required importation of 3rd party models. It's so easy, even Winston can do it!

Try LTSpice Ed! It's way different from the User Vicious (SM) Bad Old Days. Very fun and user friendly. It is dangerous because you could find yourself losing a few hours just noodling around with it.

Rhino! Yay! I love Rhino.

--Winston

Let the Record show that "Snag" on or about Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:25:41 -0500 did write/type or cause to appear in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Ah, the good old days ....

"Why,when I was a boy, we didn't have this fancy graphite. Lead pencils were made out of real lead! That taught you not to chew on the pencil!"

tschus pyotr

I'm of the opinion that you have to be able to sketch it 'on a cocktail napkin' before you should be turned loose to fire up the computer. I hear from an engineering friend that his problem on finding "draftsmen" is that most of the ones who apply, need a full up drawing for them to put on the computer. If he had time to do the drawing, he wouldn't need draftsmen!

- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

when I used to hit Toronto on the 401 every Monday at 5AM. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

It seems that the later versions of ACAD have emphasized selecting tools and menus as opposed to keyboard shortcuts or entering commands or coordinates by typing. Most commands still work, I think a few old ones don't, but the tutorials point you towards navigating the menu structure.I guess that's true with most software, but it seems markedly less efficient to use ACAD that way. It's still a tremendously complex program that is not going to be made user-friendly with some tool palettes.

Heh! Not mine! She accepts me the way I am, even funky after a hard day's work. She has never seen me shaved unless you can count the rare few times she saw me as a young girl when I was chasing with her sister, who was dating a friend.

I have what amounts to the perfect wife. She NEVER nags, and supports me when I have a wild hair up my butt, like last fall, when I purchased a used HAAS toolroom CNC mill. I have no need for it, just wanted it. She thinks I should have it. She cooks from scratch, even makes whole wheat bread from fresh ground wheat. I have a keeper.

Eat your hearts out, gents. :-)

Harold