The trouble with a CAD (a Computer Aided Designer…)

A few days later, the papery scribbles had been converted to clean and tidy computer drawings. But there is a distinct danger to on screen designing.

With tracing paper, pens and coloured pencil, drawings are not ‘solid’ and ‘final’. They are still ideas and not yet anything that could ever be built. You can wander past your drawing board eating a biscuit and suddenly see something that could improve the concept. Another scrap of tracing paper later and you have another incarnation. The method is not precious; it is very free and organic.

Get a computer involved, and the design suddenly becomes real.

This is, of course, complete rubbish and purely psychological, and if anything, combining our two designs into one using technology saved a massive amount of time, but all of a sudden, the design had flesh on the bones and could be built. It was a wonderful moment that was full of the realisation of what we were doing.

But what would the rest of the team think? Had we ticked enough of the wish list?