I used to trace every single blueprint by hand before digitizing, but now I just snap a photo and scale it in CAD.

Switched over after I spent 8 hours on a pencil layout for a small office reno in Portland only to have the client change the wall locations the next day, has anyone else ditched the light table entirely?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_margaret1mo agoTop Commenter

Light tables still win for me when I need to feel the line weight before locking it in digital.

haydenbutler13d ago

Ask @riverreed if they ever worry about losing the precision of a hand-scaled drawing when they do that quick photo method. I get why people switch, especially with flaky clients changing their minds every five minutes. But I've had a few jobs where the photo distortion from a phone lens threw off dimensions just enough to cause problems at the job site - a quarter inch here, half inch there. Not a huge deal for an office reno, but I do a lot of historic restoration work where those old walls aren't square and the photo scaling can drift without careful calibration. So do you still use a reference scale in the photo or just trust the program to square it up?

riverreed1mo ago

Ditched the light table the second I had to redo a whole set of electrical plans because the homeowner decided they wanted the fridge on the opposite wall. Took me maybe 10 minutes to snap a new photo, scale it, and shift everything over. Would have been a full afternoon of erasing and redrawing on paper.