A progression is underway.

Going the wrong way for 35+ years

Paul Burchard, PhD says philosophy precedes both science and engineering.
An old friend said it also precedes philosophers getting tied to the whipping post.

To earn the whipping I’ve written this blog since 2016 (and did my earlier work since 2007) to counter absurd notions and convey what I know first hand from doing AEC modeling and drawing myself.

To clarify (to get on target), what makes a difference is:

• To ask what drawings are.
  _{(specifically, what technical drawings in AEC are):
  Drawing is a lens for looking, the vehicle for looking with intent — at models mental, physical, and digital — and showing that you did.}

• To know that drawings are not “just dumb lines and arcs”.
  _{That they are (and why they are) the vehicle for the core work of AEC professions: a medium for thinking things through, all the way through.}
  

• To imagine using digital models to evolve the form of expression of the lens for looking:
  _{If technical drawing, the vehicle for looking with intent — at models mental, physical, and digital — and showing that you did, were invented in the midst of digital modeling, today, instead of centuries ago, what would it look like}?
  

Absurd notions—about the demise of technical drawing in architecture, engineering, and construction, and advocacy for this demise—trample over discourse since 2004

The situation is stagnant.

Drawing is not being replaced and isn’t replaceable by models. The idea is like “replacing” telescopes with the cosmos. We have the cosmos, the universe in the night sky, therefore we should rid ourselves of our lens for looking at it, abandon our telescopes.

Debating this with someone who advocates it is futile. They’re floating around mid-air propelled by slogans, devoted to ideas they haven’t spent 2 seconds actually thinking about.

Drawing quality has declined though over the last 20 years, typically, accompanied by inadequate digital modeling. We’re dealing with demise but of a higher order, not of drawing but of things greater.

Discussion needs to return to fundamentals.
Start again by understanding what drawing is
(as was well known in former times).

Software development will follow.

Looking (seeing) and thinking are a loop

I assert (or claim):

Drawing is a lens for looking, the vehicle for looking with intent—at models mental, physical, and digital—and showing that you did. 

But what does it mean?

And in any case, one cannot just assert; the meaning has to be discussed.
Judge for yourself if the following supports the assertion.

What is the intent?
The answer has two components: 

1. Notice the loop: 

2. And notice the intent, told on the black field below (please read it)::

It’s the what(s) and why, why we draw: 

• what we’re looking for
• what we’re asking and answering
• what we’re thinking about (and how we think)
• and overall why we do this, why we draw
  • it’s to gather all of these whats
• all together it’s the intent:

The intent really is about getting ourselves into this loop.

• What we see and look at informs what we think about.
• What we think about informs what we see and look at.

The set of drawings is the expression of this loop, both the active experience of it, and a tangible record of it.

The idea of dispensing with that is self-defeating and counterproductive. It’s like refusing to believe that recorded sound ought to be synchronized into silent film. Many did refuse that including Jack Warner himself in 1926, 28 years after the first machine demonstrating the fusion of sound into film in 1898.

It’s also like saying the cosmos, that it exists, is reason to abandon telescopes. Countering that, one argues against utter nonsense (and its entrenched believers).

Inevitably AEC has not dispensed with the vehicle for looking at models, drawing.

But what the software industry has done is this:

They’ve locked the vehicle for looking with intent—at models—into a form of expression that predates digital modeling (and digital computing) by centuries.

The vehicle for: 

• looking with intent—at digital models—and showing that you did, 

looks and feels exactly like the vehicle for:

• looking with intent—at mental models—and showing that you did.

21st century software does nothing to develop the form of the vehicle. 
On the contrary, it appears as if designed to enforce stasis and prevent development.

This is mostly unwitting because it just never occurs to developers of these products to ask:

What—are—drawings?

• A lens for looking, the vehicle for looking with intent — at models mental, physical, and digital — and showing that you did.

Imagine using digital models to evolve the form of expression of the lens for looking:

Ask: If technical drawing, the vehicle for looking with intent — at models mental, physical, and digital — and showing that you did, were invented in the midst of digital modeling, today, instead of centuries ago, what would it look like?

Unlock the vehicle: 
https://tangerinefocus.com

Some steps have been taken.
See block [2] below. 

The steps have not reached the core apps, yet.

And the steps already taken are just a baby’s first steps. 
See block [3] below for what mature athletic steps would look like if taken:

Progress is certain: