Luger Carbine

[Olle]

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.