113 Architecture questions - Do people still draw by hand?
Do people still draw by hand at all?
The rapid change from manual drawing to CAD has changed the work in architectural offices, plans are only produced by hand in exceptional cases, data is exchanged digitally and this is increasingly done in 3D.
Drawing and painting are still taught at university, and emphasis is placed on the depiction of people as well as buildings and objects.
In practice, there are many situations where hand sketches are useful. When designing, you give shape to an idea; when drawing details, you can illustrate a principle, visualise transitions or give form to an idea.
The essence of an idea can be best captured with pencil and paper, especially when you are first capturing an idea during the design process. Sketches concretise the essentials, the essence and allow you to grasp shapes and proportions without going into too much detail. In meetings, sketches often enable the joint development of solutions that would be difficult to communicate verbally. It is not for nothing that drawing is considered the language of architects, with a wide range of individual expression possibilities.
It is impossible to imagine communication with other participants without a hand-drawn sketch to visualise and check an idea. As long as people are involved in the planning process, it will continue to find a justified niche.
