pencil before mouse.
I've made a change. It's been about a month now and I'm not going back.
The new rule at rye+oak is simple: pencil before mouse. Sketch it before you model it. Draw the line before you place the component. Know what you're building before the software decides for you.
This started with the software. The shift to AutoCAD LT started with Eric Reinholdt's Architect Entrepreneur course at 30x40 Design Workshop. I took that course years ago. He uses AutoCAD LT, makes no secret of how much he can't stand Revit, and I always wondered why he never came around to it. I thought I knew better. It took me four years to figure out he was right.
I went from full Revit to Revit LT, and now I've landed at AutoCAD LT and SketchUp. That sounds like a step backward. I'd argue it's the opposite.
the problem with revit wasn't the software.
it was how fast things came together.
Walls connected automatically. Ceiling assemblies snapped into place. Components were pre-built. And because I never had to draw the line, I never had to think about how that connection was actually going to work. I bypassed the decision. I skipped the thought. The model looked complete long before I understood it.
Details that should have been deliberate became accidents. Wall-to-ceiling connections. Reveals. The things that matter most when you're building something that has to live in the real world and hold up to a contractor reading it in the field.
Drawing line by line forces a different kind of thinking. When you have to place every line yourself, you have to know what you're saying. AutoCAD LT gives me that. SketchUp lets me explore mass and form without the model making assumptions for me. The process is slower. That's the point.
slow is accurate.
accurate is fast.
The pen-and-paper piece runs parallel. I grew up drawing. Somewhere along the way I stopped. Russ Tyson of Whitten Architects said it best: you're only as good an artist as the day you stopped. That one stuck.
So I started again. Thirty minutes every morning. Construction details, mostly. Line weight hierarchy. Annotated orthographic drawings. Nothing finished, nothing precious. Just the act of making something by hand every single day.
It's been a month. The difference is real. Details I used to fight through in software, I now work out on paper first. By the time I open a file, I already know what I'm drawing. The frustration is mostly gone. The confidence is up.
I'm not romanticizing analog tools for their own sake. This isn't about being old school. It's about staying in control of my own decisions. The software should execute what I already understand, not generate understanding for me.
Pencil before mouse. That's where the thinking happens.
