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Old 17th Sep 2020, 10:29 am   #13
Uncle Bulgaria
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Cornwall, UK.
Posts: 2,315
Default Re: Drawing Trader Sheets back in the day.

I find drawing circuit diagrams difficult because I have to go component to component, and then the common linking wire elements end up having to jump over each other and the whole thing becomes terribly messy. I imagine there are techniques that the professionals learned to lay out things neatly, or as David says, if you have the database then there are logical ways that one will know for how the subsequent components are going to link. A transformer connected to a bridge springs to mind - I can visualise that and draw it neatly all going horizontally. I imagine seeing it for the first time and tracing it out that it would be a mess of parallel diodes and confusing links.

At architecture school in 2012 I went to Manchester to pick up a free dyeline printer and some gallons of ammonia as I liked the drawing texture I'd seen in other architects' drawings I was studying at the time. We put it in the cellar and made great scrolls of tracing paper with drawings on so as to end up with a long dyeline sheet to stand out in tutorials. The paper is UV sensitive, so leaving it in the sun is a bad idea as it will fade to nothing. The ammonia sets the exposed paper so it is more resistant to UV, but it's not a permanent medium and if in bright light will fade markedly. I still have the printer as I hope to use it in more projects. With everything now drawn on computer the textural nature of dyeline, even if printed from computer plans, is very appealing and a bit more approachable for those not well versed in reading technical drawings.
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