Architect Drafting Tools

Traditional Drafting Tools

• Traditionally, architecture was drafted using a compass, ruled straight edge and a drawing instrument, such as a pen or pencil. Architects used the compass to create any angle using intersecting arcs, connected by straight lines drawn with the ruled straightedge. In this way, drafting relied on plane geometry.

  Today, most architects do not use this method to draft, but many understand it, using the principals of plane geometry to create extremely complicated three-dimensional structures.

Initial Advancements

• Although constructing drawings using a compass was very precise, the extra steps in drafting a right angle were circumvented using tools such as the square and T-square. Furthermore, fixed and adjustable triangles were developed to allow the architect to draft multiple angles, without having to construct the angles using plane geometry.

  Many architects still prefer to use the T-square, triangles and ruled straightedge to draft. However, the computer and its applications are slowly replacing this method.

Computer Aided Design

• Computer Aided Design, or CAD, is the preferred modern method of efficiently creating and developing architectural drawings. CAD provides the same traditional tools, translated to the computer, to draft; however, CAD allows the architect to update and copy drawings quickly and easily. Furthermore, CAD allows multiple drawings to overlay one another in order to check for accuracy and consistency. Some CAD applications have even added rendering tools, which provide realistic images of the design the architect is drafting.

Building Information Modeling

• Building Information Modeling, or BIM, follows in the footsteps of CAD; however, BIM allows the architect to create a model of the building, instead of drafted views of the structure. BIM allows the architect to construct and test the building in the computer, before it is ever constructed in real life. As such, BIM creates an extremely accurate structure that is easily conveyed to the builder and owner. In time, BIM should outstrip CAD and take over the market. BIM can efficiently do all the drafting that CAD provided, but BIM produces the work three-dimensionally.