Eliminating drawings undermines thought itself.
It’s doubtful that pulling the rug out from under thinking, should be framed as challenging.
It’s something else entirely.
Has anyone promoting the idea of eliminating drawings over the last 20+ years put any thought into what drawings are?
Before devoting themselves to their elimination?
In the 90s when I was doing total drawing automation from digital models, I used to assume that the people in software companies serving AEC knew very well what drawings are. They developed CAD and BIM applications, so they must know what these things are, that those tools are used to produce.
That’s what I thought.
But I think I was mistaken.
I’m not a mind reader. But, over the 10 years I worked at those companies, I heard no one give it any consideration, other than dismissive consideration:
“Drawings are just dumb lines and arcs.”
– software developers circa 2000
Other than rhetoric about their elimination, and current automation, I never heard anyone talk about what drawings are, not in internal discussions, not in marketing communications, not in industry articles, not in conference presentations. Not a word ever said. Calling them ‘deliverables’ doesn’t count. You can deliver milk, and call milk a deliverable. But that doesn’t mean anything.
If they were thinking about what drawings are, but never talked about that, that would be strange indeed wouldn’t it?
Occam’s razor: they weren’t thinking about it.
What drawings are never occurred to them. Even just to ask what they are, never occurred to them. They were just dumb lines and arcs. So, completely dismissed, not worth a thought.
And yes, you can compare the digital modeling/drawing software industry to maps. It’s a good analogy.
We have of course digital models of the world and all its roads.
- But the developers of these things did not fail to ask, what is a map?
- They did not posit (foresee and dedicate themselves to) a world without maps, a world where a total 3D model is all anyone needs.
- And they did not fail to notice mental maps (mental models)
They knew very well the function of maps, and set out to transform its form of expression.
The function is to answer how do I get from here to there?
And the map enables the answer.
In former times, you’d study the map and formulate your instructions, write them down in a list (or memorize the list) and visualize the list against a mental model, of the world or the relevant part of the world.
So that’s two things, a model, and a set of instructions within the model.
So, since Google Maps, those two work in tandem digitally, in a manner analogous to old style mental mapping:
Here are your instructions, embedded within the world model. Those instructions are the new form of expression of what used to be done with flat maps and mental models. The point here is that the digital model alone effectively does nothing and would be useless without the instructions embedded within it for getting from here to there.
This is not a perfect analogy though to AEC digital modeling and technical drawing.
AEC instructions are more complex than driving or walking from A to B.
So what are AEC technical drawings about?
What are they for? What is their purpose? In other words, what are they?
Project development and delivery, in architecture, engineering, and construction, is about building models (mental and digital, and physical models) and QA/QC’ing those models by developing and issuing a set of construction drawings. The drawings are a continuous QA/QC process.
What QA/QC means in project development and delivery:
If you’re designing a building, a ship, a machine, or an aircraft, designing any complex thing for construction or manufacturing, what’s really happening is that:
- you’re formulating a mental and digital model of the thing,
- that model is fuzzy, and full of gaps and inaccuracies, and
- you’re shepherding the model from its inadequate state to something functionally adequate.
Basic Questions
Very soon after project start, an AEC digital model quickly exceeds our cognitive grasp. It’s just too much to hold in mind. We experience a declining ability to answer even basic questions about it, like:
- is it done yet?
- is it good enough yet?
- is the model forming a coherent functionally successful whole?
- is there good fit among the physical items modeled?
- are any physical items that matter, missing? Where? Where not?
- is the model good enough in some regions and not others?
- where are the regions that are good enough?
- does anything signify to anyone the useful distinction between regions that are good enough and all other regions that may not be?
Focus is needed.
First of all, recognize the difference:
- The broader field
- The narrowing focus
The interplay between those is the mind in motion. Or perhaps more precisely, sets the mind in motion.
As it is for all fields, so it is in AEC design and construction.
AEC technical drawings are checks against omission and for good fit:
- At informative locations within modeled environments (within models mental, physical, and digital) we develop and express our act of attentive clarifying focus. Let’s call these locations, locations of visual close study (VCS).
- At VCS locations in models we conduct physical evaluation of the model. Physical evaluation consists mainly of two checks:
- A check AGAINST OMISSION of physical items in the model (everything that should be shown here at this VCS location, is shown here; nothing that matters, here, is missing), and
- A check FOR GOOD FIT among the physical items present (define good fit however you like. Vitruvius defines good fit here).
These two checks are QA/QC and interpretive work carried on through project design and development, and continuing during construction.
- Physical and good fit evaluations conclude with AFFIRMATION of model QA/QC. Who affirms what, where, within models mental, physical, and digital, is made clear. This supports accountability. But before that, coherent thought, and thought conveyable at least, and adequately conveyed as needed. One can affirm, or assert, that at these locations, the primary checks have been made, and professional standard of care, met.
One must always remember that these checks and affirmations are made at an already, first of all, narrowed set of locations within a model, not ALL locations, but representative ones. Everyone is free to take whatever they can from all other locations within the FIELD of a model, but at these locations affirmation is made. The narrowing comes first. Otherwise one creates an engagement with infinity problem that makes fools of us all. The narrowing sets out the necessary peaks and valleys of attention. The difference, like a voltage drop, sets the mind in motion, gets the perception engaged, makes meaning, delivers coherence, makes sense of things. - Visual close study within models, our narrowing focus within a FIELD, is the deployment of a context/focus interplay that is the engine of thought itself. Thought is an interplay between our expansive perception of a modeled environment (the FIELD), and our narrowing act of attentive focus within it, at VCS locations.
From this engine comes adequate project understanding and functional competence. In the interplay, thought happens and understanding grows.
The two poles:
(WIDE ←→ narrow)
or
(FIELD ←→ focus)
or
(MODEL ←→ VCS),
are as different from each other as the COSMOS and a ←→ lens for looking at it, as mutually distinct as the UNIVERSE and a ←→ telescope.
These things are not in any way the same kinds of things, and are mutually irreplaceable.
It should occur to no one, that one obviates the other. - Finally, expressions of attentive focus through visual close study supply the courtesy of drawing attention to things not to be missed in the model.
What’s drawn by any drawing?
Your attention.
AEC software development may, and likely will, continue to choose to be completely disinterested in the 5 primary cognitive functions above that architects, engineers, and builders are engaged in, vis-à-vis models, for the vast majority of their time.
As mentioned, it never occurs to them to think about this at all.
Thought in software companies in AEC rarely moves out of the starting gate. It’s just stuck in a gate that never opens.
The gate is a throught-terminating slogan that keeps the horses standing in place forever:
Drawings are just dumb. lines and arcs, to be automated or eliminated.
Meanwhile, architects, engineers, and builders continue doing the thinking anyway. They’re running the race and don’t have time to talk about it. They’re too busy doing it.
They’re focusing their attention (achtung), developing their memory, and putting in play the cognitive dynamic that as far as we can discern or say, is thought itself1 , by engaging the equipment for setting that dynamic in motion.
Technical drawing – in its centuries old form – is the form of that equipment (for looking at models).
That form will evolve. The evolution already started. See here:
(you should ^^^ see there)
1. …to the extent that we can attempt to describe what thinking is. At least we can say there is an observable dynamic in play when thinking happens.
OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models 