Once upon a time, sprinkler drawings were a work of technical art, but CADD systems may someday replace the old drafting board.
Issue: 9/04
Once upon a time, sprinkler drawings were a work of technical art. They embodied hours of painstaking love and passion. Designers used pencil and paper taped to wooden drafting boards to create meticulous drawings. Each drawing was different. It bore the individual designer's personality, his trademark, to the extent that one could identify the designer based on the art and lettering. Those days are rapidly drawing to a close as industry is swept into the information age. We are in an era of obsession with productivity that threatens to blur the distinction between workers and machines. It is possible that CADD systems may someday replace manual drafting and the old drafting board. However, the extent to which this can be efficiently achieved depends on the effect that CADD will have on the design production function. Some see CADD as a nefarious conspiracy to create a "brave new world" run by technocrats bent on making designers obsolete. Others see it as freeing them from mundane and repetitive tasks best done by machines, thus allowing designers to focus their energy and creativity on the design process. But is CADD different from other technologies?