Computer Studio I

The shift from manual drafting to CAD, which presupposes rather than replaces drawing-board discipline — CAD is a faster, more accurate, editable drawing board, not a designer. What CAD is (geometry defined by coordinates and numbers) and is not (automatic correctness), with the honest limits (garbage-in-garbage-out, over-reliance). Vector versus raster and why CAD scales and edits losslessly. The Cartesian coordinate system and the three ways to specify a point — absolute, relative and polar. The golden rule: draw everything at 1:1 full size in model space and apply scale only at output. World versus user coordinate systems, units (1 unit = 1 mm), and reading the command line.

The heart of the course — building a drawing from a small vocabulary of commands used as decisions, not buttons. The draw commands (line, polyline, circle, arc, rectangle, ellipse, polygon) and the crucial LINE-versus-POLYLINE distinction; the modify commands (move, copy, rotate, scale, mirror, offset, trim, extend, fillet, chamfer, array, stretch) with OFFSET and FILLET-0 as interior favourites; the precision tools that place points exactly — object snaps, ortho, polar and object-snap tracking, and direct distance entry; window versus crossing selection; and the construction discipline of drawing accurately at 1:1 with clean junctions rather than eyeballing.

Where a drawing becomes a managed document. Layers — the single most important organisational concept, transparent overlays by function/element controlling colour, linetype and lineweight, with on/off, freeze/thaw and lock states and the golden ByLayer principle, plus the idea of layer standards. Blocks — reusable symbols (furniture, doors, fixtures) that insert at any scale and update globally, with attributes for schedules and dynamic blocks. Annotation — text and text styles, annotative scaling, multileaders and tables; dimensioning with associative dimensions and dimension styles; hatching and poché for materials; and the line conventions (linetypes, lineweights) carried over from Interior Graphics I.

The leap to three dimensions and to communication. Why model in 3D — to see and decide, and to communicate with clients; the conceptual model of 3D geometry (wireframe, surface, solid) and the Boolean operations (union, subtract, intersect); SketchUp as the interior designer's approachable tool (push/pull on faces, groups and components, the sticky-geometry lesson, inference) versus AutoCAD 3D, choosing the tool to the task; navigating 3D (orbit, views, cameras); the render pipeline conceptually (materials, lighting, camera, engine → a raster image) and real-time versus offline rendering; and the central distinction between a working drawing (measured, for the builder) and a presentation drawing (persuasive, for the client).

Turning a drawing into a deliverable and a managed asset. Model space versus paper space and layout viewports — the mechanism that delivers Unit I's promise, composing scaled views (a whole plan at 1:50, a detail at 1:5) on one sheet from one full-size model; plotting to scale, plot styles (CTB colour-to-lineweight versus STB named) and the ISO A-series sheet sizes and title block from Interior Graphics I; file management and standards — templates, external references (xrefs), file naming, CAD layer standards, and the DWG/DXF/PDF formats with backup discipline; and BIM AWARENESS — that BIM is an information-rich object model whose drawings are coordinated views (CAD draws a building, BIM models one), the tools (Revit, ArchiCAD, IFC) and why graduates should be CAD-fluent and BIM-aware.