Is it recommended to be skilled in hand drawing in order to design in SW at a professional level?
How many of you are able to draw by hand before designing your model in SW? I would like to know if most of you are skilled in sketching an idea on a piece of paper first.
5 Answers
It is not mandatory that you have to be an expert in hand drawing to model in Solidworks. I cannot draw by hand but can give excellent output using Solidworks. Hand sketching only helps for a better understanding of the concept or gives you a rough image of how the product looks like.
Hand sketching and manual drafting are not required, but would help. Knowledge of geometry and multi-view drawings are more important IMHO, but not required in order to use today's CAD software.
Can you draw a perfect line, rectangle, circle, arc, polygon, ellipse, text... by hand? No
Can you do all of the above "perfect" using a CAD software, the answer is yes.
So, you do not need to be skilled in hand drawing.
Practice geometry, memorize your sketch tools and have passion in what you do.
Just my thoughts,
Being able to sketch helps in visualizing ideas & concepts as part of the DESIGN CONCEPT but does not overly play a part in CAD function drafting skills. Being able to visualize in ones minds eye how a parametric model is structured & formulated does go to secondary parametric CAD skills in sculpturing out the model. M.Bruton
Both hand sketch and software is just a tool to visualize our idea or concept. Back then when i was a real engineer i used both tool to communicate with other member of fellowship engineer. The most distinct difference between them is TIME. You just need approx. 1 hour to transfer your idea to other person via hand sketch, while you might need 24 hours to do it with software
