I have say it, I hate it when I have to learn anything and CAD programs have got to be the worst. I’ve already mentioned losing several hours last spring when I first started looking into using a CAD program to do the lab redesign, so I am committed to work through all the tutorials so that I can get this damn project done. At least that’s the theory.

So I was working through one of the first little tutorial drawings, an exterior drawing of a two-story house. I was having a little difficulty getting a sense of how to manage the length of my lines and knowing how big the two windows on the front of the house are supposed to be and because I needed to split my screen between the tutorial PDF and the worksheet I had some scale issues. Then it dawned on me, for this tutorial all they want me to get is which tool to use to draw which line and they don’t care how big I make anything as long it looks somewhat like the picture in the tutorial. As usual, I was thinking too hard about this and placing requirements on myself that were not part of the original project. In a word, I was working way to hard and making the whole thing all that much more less enjoyable. Damn.

The problem is that I have a specific project that I need to accomplish and if they had a template that I could tweak or a tutorial that would start from that kind of project, then I’d feel much more comfortable. I hate thinking that I’m working through all of these tutorial only to get cursory exposure to tools that I won’t use. I mean, I need to draw a 2-D room based to the dimensions of my lab and then a lot of little virtual desks, tables, chairs and other virtual pieces of furniture to move around in the room/drawing so that I can figure out what layout is going to work best. All the previous lab designs were quickly drawn with paper and pencil without the benefit of so much as a ruler. If it weren’t for the fact that I will have to teach a unit (or units) on using CAD programs this coming school year I would probably have given up on the whole thing already. This just brings home the point that technology has to start at a point that is easier than doing it “the old way.” It’s not enough that I can do a “fly-around” animation once I’m done with my drawing if I don’t want to do a fly around. I just want to draw the damn room with a reliable confidence that the room on my computer will help me see problems with my layout before I move heavy desks and tables and most definitely before I start running cable and fastening things with cable-ties. Ack. JBB