In the late 1970's a few individuals volunteered for training in computer aided drafting and design with major corporations that would replace the older manual drafting done with pen, pencil, and vellum. At that time the costly workstations were connected to a mainframe computer and only a few selected individuals were allowed to utilize the newest of engineering technologies. Select groups of electrical and mechanical designers were instructed in basic drawing tools using lines, circles, and arcs.

The training methods developed were a continuation of post World War II drafting manuals which involve determining perimeter size, geometric erection of center points, centerlines and tangent points, and projection lines. Those of us in initial startup had no trouble with association to pencil drawing since all of us had spent nearly a decade diagramming hundreds and in some cases thousands of detailed paper drawings.

Those structured manuals explaining the precise methods of constructing intersections of lines and arcs were invaluable in the first ten years before more complex modifying tools such as Fillet, Extend and Trim made construction lines antiquated.

By the late 1980's any instruction in board drafting methods using construction lines actually added a level of complexity to the detailing process and drawing times in many architectural and engineering departments continued to remain the same although CAD software companies like Autodesk were developing more powerful modification tools.

By the 1980's and throughout the 1990's, I removed from any curriculum all drafting board courses using older techniques. Whether retraining seasoned professionals or new talented college and high school students, the computer was the starting point.