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Hot take: My vacation sketch became a CAD practice project. | Drafters - Vivisector

Hot take: My vacation sketch became a CAD practice project.

I doodled a church spire while on holiday in Germany. Back home, I modeled it in CAD to keep my skills fresh (it was a good exercise). Do you ever use travel sketches as drafting practice?

4 comments

4 Comments

jades116mo ago

But how much do you think those old builders actually had fully worked out in drawings versus just knowing the rules and figuring it out as they built? I always wonder if the real magic is in that middle step, where your sketch has the feeling but the CAD model has to make hard choices. Are you finding that the program forces you to decide things the original artist might have just left to a carver's skill? That gap between the idea and the built thing must be huge.

mary_hernandez6mo ago

Freaking out that you casually doodled a gothic spire and then CAD-ed it. Those things are insane with all the little stonework and tiny statues. Just trying to get the angles right on the flying buttresses would make my brain melt. That's next-level practice, way beyond just drawing a simple building. Your skill must be wild.

stella1216mo ago

I read once that the Notre Dame spire had over 500 individual stone pieces. Makes you wonder, like @jades11 said, how many of those were left to the carver's gut feeling versus a perfect drawing.

juliaprice6mo ago

Gothic builders long ago used basic tools like circles and rulers to plan those spires. When you sketch and then use CAD, @mary_hernandez, you're going from a loose drawing to a tight computer design. The cool part is how the drawing shows the beauty, but CAD makes you face how it really stands up. Those small statues aren't just for show, they often help hold the building up, which you see when you model them. It's a neat mix of art and making things work that few other building styles have.