Tuesday, August 31, 2010

AutoCAD coming to the Mac for the first time in 18 years, should finally give them the software to design a working antenna

Inkjet plotterImage via WikipediaWanna know how you know you're old? My high school drafting classes were all done with mechanic pencil, on proper paper and drafting tables. Worse, we were the last class in my university to train in paper drafting for our engineering drawing courses, we were the pilot class for ACAD, the next class was 50/50, and the "kids" that arrived two years later did all their coursework in ACAD.

My favorite part was watching people do some sloppy shiat thinking nobody could tell just by looking at the screen. You can easily grade paper drawings by looking at the smoothness of the pencil lines, but on screen all you see is a straight line. The trick is to have the student send the drawing to a pen plotter, if the student did something stupid, it will show up when the pen plotter draws it. For example, curve transitions that are not snapped properly, chamfers, compound curves, or even lines that don't connect properly.

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