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| The 'A' Word. |
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| That's right: Architecture. Back in college, my friends and I used to tease Wayne and his roommate (also an architecture student) for going off on long conversations about The A Word. Now, I'm creating a set of working drawings under Wayne's direction for the Foothill Firehouse project, and I find I'm getting swept up in the A Word world more than I have in ten years of marriage. I'm getting a double dose--not only am I learning how to create drawings in AutoCAD from Wayne, I'm also learning how to draft by hand in my landscape design graphics class. I joke to my classmates about having a second teacher, but there's more truth to it than joke, really. |
| The image above is a cleaned up version of what's called a "planting plan." Planting plans list the plants used in a project and show where they are to be planted. Here are some of the plants we're using for the firehouse project: a rockrose, an Australian Bluebell Creeper, two ornamental grasses, and one of the ground covers--an iceplant with white flowers. Eventually, I'll have detail drawings showing how to plant a tree or shrub and how to space ground cover plants as well. |  |
| When these drawings are done, Wayne expects we'll have three or four sheets of drawings--a cover sheet with general information about the project, this planting plan, a site plan listing what we want removed from the site and what is to be built on the site (everything but plants, essentially), and a bunch of detail drawings showing how specific items are to be constructed. We've designed a pseudo bridge to "cross" the pseudo stream (defined by a change in ground cover), and that's the first detail I've finished. Other details yet to come include directions on how to rebuild the gravel path (rainwater has eroded much of the path), how to install new wood headers alongside the path, and how to install a drain so that rainwater won't erode the path again (I hope!). Here's the bridge detail: | |
| The colors here define pen sizes, not the colors the bridge will be painted. This detail shows 4x4 posts embedded in concrete (that's the red stuff) and arcs created by cutting curves in 2x12 and 2x10 lumber. The little white dots are nails. |
| This is a detail describing how we want the contractor to put the cap--a 2x6 piece of lumber--onto the bridge rail. | 
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So while I'm learning all this neat stuff about how to create a drawing in AutoCAD from Wayne, in class I'm restricted to working in pencil only. I'm somewhat surprised at how much drafting technique I picked up from Wayne in college, such as the trick to rotating my pencil while I draw a long line (keeps the tip sharp), enough so that often the class lectures serve more as reminders for me than they tell me something new. The fun part is when Wayne disagrees with my (real) teacher's teachings...one of these days I'm going to have to get the two of them to meet in person so I'm not stuck in the middle of their disagreements! Cheryl | |
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