On January 23, 2019 at 22:12, Ernie Gilman said...
Ah. All is explained. Architects are the guys who very often try to sell their work by making a drawing showing the finished building, often drawn as though at a distance impossibly far from the building, because, hey, there are buildings on the other side of the street. Many times architect's renderings do not include people, maybe because that messes up the look. And, of course, the joke:
Why can't architects get into heaven?
Because Jesus was a carpenter.
For any who don't get it, this is a comment on architects designing things that are at least clumsy, and sometimes impossible, to build.
I didn't study at a school where they teach people to draw pretty buildings, it was MSOE. We learned how to make them stand and why, not to hope they don't fall over or collapse.
Most architects don't do their own renderings, but they do need to show the new building in place, so why would they make it seem that the viewer is 3' away from it?
As for me and dimensions, I prefer one system at a time. And inches, not feet and inches. It's all about instant usability. I feel that if I have to multiply something by twelve and add it to a remainder before I can divide it by three, then the dimension is given in the wrong units.
You would use 170" instead of 14'-2"? Why? If you were working with plans and elevations, I would be surprised if the builders don't give you a hard time for that. In a classroom situation, it would never pass.
BTW, during our first meeting with the Saudi engineers who were involved in the huge theater project we did last decade, one of my functions was to throw out the metric/feet conversions so the other half of the people would have a sense of the dimensions.
Which reminds me of a funny moment, when we told them that a structure could be made out of plain 2x4s, and they wrote down 2".
By 4".
And I blew them away by telling them that 2x4s measure 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" (3.8 x 8.9).
OUR 2x4s are 1-1/2" x 3-1/3", but what's available in Saudi Arabia? (I could find out, but I would have to wake a friend in order to ask)
Throw out metric. Typical American.
