We have been teaching board drafting from an old textbook and it has been awesome. The kids are loving the class and not just because we crack jokes. The information in this field has not changed much in the last century. CAD sure has changed since it's inception and that has required us teachers to get to our study. The folks at Autodesk have been busy developing new software and we have been busy trying to get in touch with them. We have meet some good folks along the way. We learned o rotate a pumpkin. We drafted sheet metal for laser cutting. I will post more on that tomorrow.

CAD drafting

We had some debate about which programs the students would use for Computer Aided Drafting, CAD. We toyed with several free options like DraftSight (Solidworks), TinkerCAD (Autodesk), FreeCAD, and a plethora of other options. In the end AUTODESK was the strongest candidate, and allowed for the students to learn at a industry standard. We start with teaching the basic language of CAD drafting. We teach the language in a practical, auditory, visual, and tactile interactive way. We step through successive drawings as students develop their skills with greater complexity.

Build upon the known.

Some students using CAD to develop drafting skills as we move from board drafting to computers.

We are project based educational program for new designers.

Our workshop is located in Central Virginia in a town called Appomattox. Yes, Lee surrendered to Grant in the McLean house just up the road from us, but we are far from the past. We are a program developed for students to engage in real world drafting and design.
We are leveraging several CAD programs that parallel our board drafting to create tangible objects. We are instilling in new learners the tools and the mindset required to work in the growing fields of drawing and design.