Quote:
Originally Posted by sheepherder
I make 99% of my 'drawings' on the fly; on envelopes, as I said...Sometimes a sheet of used copier paper... 
I had a drawing board and T-square in my closet, up until my last divorce...When a lot of my things mysteriously disappeared...Curiously, my triangles, protractors, & French curves are still here...  |
One good thing about CAD drawings is that you won't lose the drawing, it can be saved in pristine condition and printed out every time you need a copy in the shop. I used to have notebooks in the shop, where I jotted down sketches and dimensions for future use. It works, but afterwhile they tend to get tattered and soaked in oil and cutting fluid, and some may simply get lost.
I found that it was actually easier to use CAD, as it can do a lot of the math you use when drawing and fabricating parts (finding center lines, radii, diameters of roundovers, divisions etc.). It will also show if you made a mistake when you measured intermediate dimensions, as the overall dimensions won't match, lines won't meet etc.
Nowadays I sketch the part and go directly to the PC to make a CAD drawing. It may sound like overkill for one-off jobs, but sobebody else might need it and it sure saves a lot of time if you one day have to make another part just like it.