WE MUST GRAPPLE WITH SOME FACTS:
In the category of “things amenable to visual interpretation”:
1. To understand anything, simple or complex, we depend on the formation of an adequate mental model.
2. Effective mental model formation for simple tasks is autonomic and never fails.
3. Effective mental model formation for complex tasks is somatic, requires conscious effort, through technique that offloads cognitive burden into a suitable externalization in some medium.
4. The externalizations are un-interpretable (i.e., meaningless) until re-internalized through somatic cognitive effort, in the mental model.
5. VIEWS, TWEENERS, MEMORY, WOBBLE (see here) are aspects of the externalization and its re-internalization in the mental model.
6. The form taken by the externalization is subject to constraints inherent in human perception and cognition. Among the constraints are the nature of view selection, the role of views in mental model formation, and limits on the frequency and amplitude of human cognitive investment in visual attention on those views governed by the human visual attention sine curve. (see here)
7. In architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) and similar fields, the medium of externalization is technical drawing in the traditional form we’re familiar with.
8. The technical drawing is “hosted” somewhere, e.g.: on paper or some digital equivalent, an electronic sheet, a CAD file, a PDF, etc.
9. The trend of calling for “…the end of drawing (7), because models” ignores the relevant facts above and the potential for useful change as follows:
10. There is in fact, no reason to keep paper or its digital equivalent as the externalization host. The digital model is a superior host.
11. There is no reason to keep the externalization (external from the mental model) locked in its traditional form (technical drawing as we know it). The form of the externalization’s expression, hosted within the digital model, can evolve to exceed (bigly) the traditional form’s support for adequate mental model formation, therefore helping people more quickly reach adequate understanding of complex tasks amenable to visual interpretation.
12. A proposal for this (11) is linked below.