Special for the elderlky

On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 23:09:25 -0500, Frank Krygowski scribed:

On 1/30/2021 9:58 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 19:26:42 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote:

I remember the time a salesman/consultant came to our department to
demonstrate a brand new thing called AutoCAD.

I suffered through multiple versions of Acad from 2.13 (1985) to R13
(1994). It was becoming too expensive for what I needed so I switched
to Autosketch. That was fine until Autodesk ruined it with version 2.1
which changed literally everything. These days, I use KiCad for PCB
work and various shareware EDA (electronic design automation) programs.

"Changed everything" is my main gripe about software in general. AutoCAD
usually made its interface sort of backward compatible - as in, the
commands or menu items you were used to were still there somewhere - but
the guy in our department who taught that stuff spent a lot of time with
each version learning what was new. And yes, it's very expensive. As I
recall, they wouldn't even let you skip a version update. If you said
"I'll use ACAD 8 for several years before jumping to #11," they charged
you for 11 an amount equal to all the updates.

I don't need it any more. The last several things I've designed - just
home projects for myself and others - I've used Sketchup. It's powerful
enough for me, and I find it fun.

I do not know what the first E-CAD software I used was, but it was soon
after we purchased our first ibm compatible PC, a 286, with 1
Mb of Ram running DOS and the first add- on was a Herc mono card which
used the Herc screen as the command screen. Soon after was a chinese E-
drafting board/tablet. This was all hobby stuff as I was being paid to
support 'midframe' GIS(geographic information systems) and cartography
systems. The 'CAD was mainly hand digitising which only lasted til
scanners became economical and the pricing of scanning dropped, then it
was all on screen. It took a while for electronic data to be cheap in
Australia as GovCo believed in user pays and there was not much
competition in the private market.

As part of on-going education, I did have to do drafting subject with the
surveying and it was first subject hand drafting, so I just used a
Rotring A3 drafting set I'd purchase when I first went to university 20
years prior.

The second subject was E-CAD and we had to learn Autocad(URK!) and
Microstation (wonderful).

I agree with Franks comments about Autocad being expensive, which is why
I never purchased a copy to keep up my contractable skills in it.
Thankfully, I recovered a unhindered copy of Microstation for any complex
drawing, but weirdly I ended up using CorelDraw for any small simple
sketching/drafting as I was also using it to crunch massive survey data
sets down for report presentation maps.

I too still have all those drafting stencils, pens and pencil, plus the
chinese and other E-drafting boards and a pile of plotter pens. I
scrapped the A0 plotter when all the MS & Linux drivers went bitmapped
instead of HPGL commands. It is murder on the drive belts when a pen
plotter is driven like that.

About a decade ago, i asked around the extended family if any one want
the hand drafting stuff as a few of the relations were in technical
studies and no one did, so I guess it will stay here until goes in
another clutter reduction.

As part of on-going education, I did have to do drafting subject with the
surveying and it was first subject hand drafting, so I just used a
Rotring A3 drafting set I'd purchase when I first went to university 20
years prior.

The second subject was E-CAD and we had to learn Autocad(URK!) and
Microstation (wonderful).

I agree with Franks comments about Autocad being expensive, which is why
I never purchased a copy to keep up my contractable skills in it.
Thankfully, I recovered a unhindered copy of Microstation for any complex
drawing, but weirdly I ended up using CorelDraw for any small simple
sketching/drafting as I was also using it to crunch massive survey data
sets down for report presentation maps.

I too still have all those drafting stencils, pens and pencil, plus the
chinese and other E-drafting boards and a pile of plotter pens. I
scrapped the A0 plotter when all the MS & Linux drivers went bitmapped
instead of HPGL commands. It is murder on the drive belts when a pen
plotter is driven like that.

About a decade ago, i asked around the extended family if any one want
the hand drafting stuff as a few of the relations were in technical
studies and no one did, so I guess it will stay here until goes in
another clutter reduction.


The company I work for still has a "head drafter" though in reality he's the documentation control manager. Most of the hands-on work he does is taking solidworks files from the hardware and mechanical engineers and formatting them into 2D drawings for regulatory agency applications/changes/submissions, and creating assembly drawings for the manufacturing departments. When he started with the company many decades ago, he sat at a drafting table.

On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 4:53:45 PM UTC, wrote:
Op zaterdag 30 januari 2021 om 16:26:53 UTC+1 schreef Sir Ridesalot:
On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 9:33:10 p.m. UTC-5, John B. wrote:
A friend sent me the following. Which may be a bit nostalgic for the,
err ... adults here :-)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/emb...XTAajEzY?rel=0
--
Cheers,

John B.
Sure shows how much changed in our lifetime.

Cheers
Yes, we are getting old. If I explain to my younger colleagues that I made my first designs using this
https://images.app.goo.gl/dWnmbuwoPbPcgACK6
they shake their heads in unbelief. This is how my desk looks now:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iHDmh2vsVpbgEyEx6.

Lou

I gave a talk to kids in my son's school about the desirability of computer skills and told them my first computer, installed in an air conditioned and humidity-controlled room behind an airlock, had glowing tubes. "You mean like Nixies?" asked a kid holding up a calculator with red-glowing numbers made up of little bars whose name now escapes me, if I ever knew. (It's the sort of detail I leave to techies, who have memories like elephants.) No, I said, like in thermionic tubes, as in the amplifier I built for your dad. The headmaster, who came to sit in, said as he saw me to my car, "Just as well you brought that valve*, or they wouldn't have believed you." It was less than 20 years after we had retired that monstrous computer, which could do less than the calculator the kid held up.

* Britspeak for thermionic tube.

Andre Jute
The last curmudgeon

On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 8:03:43 PM UTC, wrote:

Need some accessories?
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-01.jpg
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-02.jpg
I still have T-square, triangles, templates, lettering guides, India
Ink, vellum, slide rules, books, printed catalogs, etc.
they shake their heads in unbelief. This is how my desk looks now:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iHDmh2vsVpbgEyEx6.

My art teacher taught me the most beautiful calligraphy, but ten years later my mother was returning handwritten letters to me, demanding that I typewrite them because my handwriting was worse than her doctor's. Computers had already done for me.

I've bought a small press and am teaching myself engraving. Some of the tools left over from when I did some drafting (as little as I couldn't fob off on a flunky) incidental to industrial design jobs are super-useful, especially the brass templates of shapes and letters and curves. It's actually much more fun than doing art on the iPad Pro with Apple's Pencil (capital C as if Apple invented the pencil -- I bet Koh-i-Noor Hardmuth in České Budějovice will be very surprised to hear that). I inherited the brass formes from the old architect from whom I bought his lovingly kept MG TC -- even as long ago as the 1960s you couldn't get the brass tools any more, only plastic. Not all forward motion is progress.

Andre Jute
With all the progress in metallurgy, do you know how hard it is today to find a decent penknife?

PS You wouldn't happen to have the freehand sketching nib for the Graphos pens, Jeff?

On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 6:13:49 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 8:03:43 PM UTC, wrote:

Need some accessories?
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-01.jpg
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-02.jpg
I still have T-square, triangles, templates, lettering guides, India
Ink, vellum, slide rules, books, printed catalogs, etc.
they shake their heads in unbelief. This is how my desk looks now:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iHDmh2vsVpbgEyEx6.
My art teacher taught me the most beautiful calligraphy, but ten years later my mother was returning handwritten letters to me, demanding that I typewrite them because my handwriting was worse than her doctor's. Computers had already done for me.

I've bought a small press and am teaching myself engraving. Some of the tools left over from when I did some drafting (as little as I couldn't fob off on a flunky) incidental to industrial design jobs are super-useful, especially the brass templates of shapes and letters and curves. It's actually much more fun than doing art on the iPad Pro with Apple's Pencil (capital C as if Apple invented the pencil -- I bet Koh-i-Noor Hardmuth in České Budějovice will be very surprised to hear that). I inherited the brass formes from the old architect from whom I bought his lovingly kept MG TC -- even as long ago as the 1960s you couldn't get the brass tools any more, only plastic. Not all forward motion is progress.

Andre Jute
With all the progress in metallurgy, do you know how hard it is today to find a decent penknife?

PS You wouldn't happen to have the freehand sketching nib for the Graphos pens, Jeff?

I tried returning letters from my brother's mother in long hand but the manual dexterity for doing that now eludes me.

On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 5:16:57 PM UTC, wrote:
On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 6:13:49 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 8:03:43 PM UTC, wrote:

Need some accessories?
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-01.jpg
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/PCB-Layout/templates-02.jpg
I still have T-square, triangles, templates, lettering guides, India
Ink, vellum, slide rules, books, printed catalogs, etc.
they shake their heads in unbelief. This is how my desk looks now:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iHDmh2vsVpbgEyEx6.
My art teacher taught me the most beautiful calligraphy, but ten years later my mother was returning handwritten letters to me, demanding that I typewrite them because my handwriting was worse than her doctor's. Computers had already done for me.

I've bought a small press and am teaching myself engraving. Some of the tools left over from when I did some drafting (as little as I couldn't fob off on a flunky) incidental to industrial design jobs are super-useful, especially the brass templates of shapes and letters and curves. It's actually much more fun than doing art on the iPad Pro with Apple's Pencil (capital C as if Apple invented the pencil -- I bet Koh-i-Noor Hardmuth in České Budějovice will be very surprised to hear that). I inherited the brass formes from the old architect from whom I bought his lovingly kept MG TC -- even as long ago as the 1960s you couldn't get the brass tools any more, only plastic. Not all forward motion is progress.

Andre Jute
With all the progress in metallurgy, do you know how hard it is today to find a decent penknife?

PS You wouldn't happen to have the freehand sketching nib for the Graphos pens, Jeff?
I tried returning letters from my brother's mother in long hand but the manual dexterity for doing that now eludes me.
..
Doesn't surprise me at all. A few years in front of a keyboard and anyone would lose the skill of handwriting, which after all is learned, as a mother tongue isn't. I suppose my mother thought that, since I worked in the arts, I would maintain that calligraphic skill. But I was a managerial trouble-shooter, in the art departments only when they were in trouble big enough for my boss, the chairman, to notice and assign some of my very expensive time to put them back into prize-winning form. -- AJ