Why does nobody mention how much guessing goes into picking the right lineweight on old permit drawings?

I had to choose between redrawing a whole plumbing riser from scratch or trying to decipher some faded 1980s bluelines last Tuesday. I went with the bluelines cause I figured it would save time, but the original drafter used like five different line thicknesses and none of them matched modern standards. Took me three hours just to figure out what was supply and what was waste. Has anyone else run into this nightmare on old retrofits?

2 comments

2 Comments

max_cooper214d ago

Oh man, my buddy did a bathroom group retrofit last month with prints from the late 80s, and he said the lineweights were so inconsistent he ended up just tracing the whole thing in red pencil (which felt like defeat). He told me he spent a whole afternoon cross-referencing the original specs with a magnifying glass, only to find out the drafter used a different pen for each layer and just eyeballed the weights.

simon_carr4d ago

Happens everywhere, honestly. I was helping my dad dig through some old shipping manifests from the 90s for a side project and the handwriting just went off a cliff halfway through the box (like someone got tired and started scribbling). It's always the same story, people just wing it and assume the next guy will figure it out.