One thing I love about owning my own business is the opportunity to learn new things. Here at Superior Shop Drawings, we are always on the lookout for ways to be more efficient when creating Millwork Shop Drawings. To do this, Steve and I explore different AutoCAD Commands and trade notes. A couple of years [...]
Working with AutoCAD Scale Factors was a necessary evil when I started in an Architectural Millwork Shop. Room Tags, Text, and Various Markers all required scaling to print consistently from one sheet to the next. Scaling thousands of objects in those early years has burned the process into my brain. These days AutoCAD utilizes Annotative [...]
For more than half of my career in the Woodworking Industry, my focus has been on the Commercial side of the business. About six months before earning my Associates Degree in Architectural Drafting and Design, I was offered a position as a Millwork Draftsman and eagerly accepted. The position allowed me to leverage my prior [...]
Have you ever been a position where someone has asked you a question that seemed so simple that you struggled with how to frame the answer? If you've been in any industry for a significant amount of time, you've probably found yourself in this situation on more than one occasion. I think that sometimes our [...]
While there are a lot of LISP files for AutoCAD to talk about, there are 5 that I use keeping productivity in mind. I use all of these on a regular basis. Not having just one of them would greatly impact the speed at which I’m able to produce drawings. I can remember when I [...]
I recently wrote a Blog Post titled Millwork Drafting Fundamentals. The purpose of that particular article was to educate new drafters on how old Manual Drafting Techniques could be used in AutoCAD to reduce errors as they relate to Plans, Elevations, and Sections not matching one another. That post triggered a question that we feel [...]
Are you an AutoCAD Drafter that is on the fence about making the switch from a Traditional Mouse to a Logitech MX Ergo Wireless Trackball? Before shelling out your hard earned cash - take a look at our opinions after using the device for the past six months. Trackballs aren't what they used to be [...]
At one point in time, if someone were to walk into your Cabinet Shop and hand you a piece of one-off molding to match - it could be quite the challenge. With the advancement of technology today, Matching Custom Molding is much easier than it used to be. Today I’d like to take you through [...]
A couple of years ago, I worked as a Draftsman for an Arichtectural Millwork company here in Pennsylvania. We focused primarily on Commercial Casework and had a decent system for Creating Quality Shop Drawings. The process started on paper. Our Estimating Department would print off Architectural Drawings on either 24x36 or 30x42 sheets. Those drawings [...]
When it comes to Millwork Shop Drawings, there are generally two common types - Submittal Drawings and As-Built Drawings. The difference between the two types is typically where they fall in the project schedule and information provided during a visit to the job site. Submittal Drawings Submittal Shop Drawings are normally completed prior to framing [...]
