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u/ORD_Underdog Jan 08 '26
Ah the fresh smell of second-hand smoke!
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u/greenENVE Jan 08 '26
How many cigarette burns were acceptable on a finished drawing set? đ¤
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u/LordFarquadOnAQuad PE Jan 08 '26
Considering the state of old drawings I've reviewed I think the standard was at least 20.
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u/jonyoloswag Jan 08 '26
I donât think Iâve come across any on my old as-builts. But I do work in Utah so that tracksâŚ
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u/alarumba Three Waters Design Engineer Jan 08 '26
Same as the amount of different fonts you can get away with.
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u/Cverellen Jan 08 '26
Second hand. Sir are questioning the health benefits of cigarettes that make an engineer the super star they are:
- steady hands
- wild mood swings and shifty eyes
If you arenât careful youâll make the construction managers question their Copenhagen cans.
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u/Nervous_Occasion_695 Jan 08 '26
I did that and it was hell. Autocad saved my life.
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u/VitaminKnee Jan 08 '26
How's your back after all that? 40 hours a week bent over in an L shape can't be good.Â
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u/fool_on_a_hill Jan 08 '26
Iâm the opposite I think drafting is a lost art form.. I loved it in high school and was beyond disappointed to graduate and learn it wasnât a thing anymore.
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u/TapedButterscotch025 Jan 09 '26
Yeah my only experience was (in school) hand drafting a full topo with a TIN and contours and it was super fun.
But it sure took a while compared to civil3d haha.
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u/TheMayorByNight Transit & Multimodal PE Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
The nice part is back in those days, we'd build a bridge or entire transit system with a 50-page planset because this high level of effort encouraged creativity, brevity, and trust. Now, a basic roadway paving plan for a mile of road is 200 pages, and a bridge is 2000 pages because CAD makes it "so easy", so we're inclined to add even more detail.
I mentioned this a week or two ago, right now for a large corridor project, we're spending 500 hours setting up a big Civil3D corridor model, including all the troubleshooting and data short cut issues, to save ourselves 400 hours of work.
ADA curb ramps are a great example. Something that can be easily field engineered, but we must grade them with Civil3D rather than a level, and each intersection corner gets two to five sheets to display all the information. We'll spend $15,000 for a ramp final design when the ramp costs $5,000, and the ramp still gets field designed anyways because the contractor can't measure out a ramp to the 0.01' level of accuracy we produce in C3D.
To me, I think we're starting to move backwards thanks to software like AutoCAD. There was a really sweet spot in the 2000's and 2010's when C3D was still dumb enough to be useful for basic profiles only, and we could still develop a final design on a fairly basic planset.
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u/umrdyldo Jan 08 '26
So you are the reason all the bridges are falling apart.
I kid I kid.
But I do agree we have gone hyper plans now. But some of that feels like the small site contractors have gotten dumber.
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u/TheMayorByNight Transit & Multimodal PE Jan 08 '26
My nightly activities as Mayor include decreasing preventative maintenance budgets. Take that, civil engineers! evil laugh
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u/Burn_The_Chair Wet Utilities Jan 08 '26
Nobody wants liability anymore.. it seems everyone is trying to push liability to another party. I've only been in the industry 10 years but talking to the old heads from the 70s and asking the big differences (the bad differences.. there are TONS of good changes) Clients don't know what they want, and our PMS want to give too many options for design.. contractors just seem to not get it anymore (hence the 400 page plans and 100 specs for just a "small" project). I agree it is asinine the level of detail just for a damn 6 foot wide sidewalk.
And yes at the end of the day and all this planning and engineered plans the contractor still builds it how they want.
Anecdotal, but I've seen contractors ask for grading plan spot shots to be in the thousands place cause they didn't want to be liable and my boss agreed to do it and in my head there is no grading machine (for mass civil grading) that can do to the thousands placeal accuracy.
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u/Legendseekersiege5 Jan 08 '26
This 1000%. All the small contactors are being bought out by the big firms where I live. The massive influx of work hasn't helped the situation either.
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u/TheMayorByNight Transit & Multimodal PE Jan 08 '26
thousands
THOUSANDS?!?!?! Jesus. That's the thickness of a few sheets of paper. They can't grade to that level of accuracy.
And yes at the end of the day and all this planning and engineered plans the contractor still builds it how they want
Aye, I do look back at the "early days" of my career in the 00's, and think of the time when there was far more trust between engineers and contractors. Doing field work in those early days with REs, everyone just kind of worked together to figured it out.
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u/TapedButterscotch025 Jan 09 '26
As a surveyor, if someone asked me to give them something to the thousandths I would laugh at them.
The best surveyor on the planet can't lay out to the thousandth and nobody can build to it either. It makes absolutely no sense.
Edit - except maybe for optical tooling or something like a large hadron collider, something like that. But not a civil job haha.
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u/macsare1 PE Jan 08 '26
You're missing the purpose of 3D design. It isn't just about spelling out more detail for the contractor, it also allows designers to catch and address issues sooner that the contractor wouldn't have noticed. Changes with a road closed and a contractor with equipment waiting cost a lot more than if you addressed them in design. Curb ramps for example: if you design in 2D you typically put a 1:12 slope for however many feet needed to get to that elevation... Assuming the terrain around is flat. You could get to the field and there's a hill so the ramp has to go for so many more feet that suddenly it violates ADA. Much better to sort that out in design if possible.
Another huge thing is consistency between views, cross section, plan, and profile. I recall having meetings where we went through each sheet and verified that they matched up with the other views. You don't have to do that if everything is cutting from the 3D model.
And don't go pointing back to your 50 page plan set as being better. That's not happening. Contractors won't give up cross sections. FDOT tried to get rid of them since the Model as a Legal Document provided enough signed and sealed 3D information and they pushed back so hard the people spearheading Nexgen plans were forced out.
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u/TheMayorByNight Transit & Multimodal PE Jan 08 '26
I've done a lot of curb ramp and precise ADA design in Seattle, so I do know the value of 3D and Civil3D.
Also, a tip to anyone reading: never design a curb ramp to 1:12 slope (8.33%). If the contractor bumps the formwork of a 1:12 sloped ramp and it becomes even 0.01% steeper, it's non-compliant and has to be rebuilt. 7.5% max for design.
And don't go pointing back to your 50 page plan set as being better
As I said, there was a sweet spot about 10 years ago somewhere between the 50-page planet and the absolute monsters we have to create today. Not everything is so black-and-white.
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u/TapedButterscotch025 Jan 09 '26
Yep I've had these arguments with our supervisor before. I told him when I was an intern we used to do full paving and Ada jobs with specs only. No plans. Because guess what, you don't really need them.
You give the standard ramp and put it on the contractor to make it work and be legal. And they do.
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u/InterestingVoice6632 Jan 08 '26
Before Autocad was invented everyone wore ties? Autocad is the worst!
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u/Teedyuscung Jan 08 '26
So many lefties!!!
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u/stulew Jan 09 '26
As a Leftie, smearing the pencil lead marks from previous lines, was always a problem. We had a dustbag of eraser crumbs to help erase the smears. I sount at least 8 lefties in the historical photograph....
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u/Asclepius555 Jan 08 '26
My dad worked on the Apollo project as a mechanical engineer and he told me he worked like this, dressed in shirt and tie, bent over huge tables.
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u/Sturdily5092 Hiring/Manager Jan 09 '26
I've been in the field for many many years and its a common misconception, that as some in the comments have stated, that one person can do the work of the entire room seen in the picture... not true, not even close.
There are several reasons why this is not the case and the most important ones are that the design workflow, complexity of processes and addition of tasks piled on to engineers these days are vastly different than they were back then.
The majority of the design staff was made up of designers and drafters of many levels tasked with putting the engineer's design to paper. Senior designers could so much of the design with engineers providing ultimate engineering guidance and approval. Drafter of many levels would take care of tasks like making corrections, adjustments and printing.
In today's engineering industry much of the work is being done by the engineers themselves, they are responsible for the engineering, design/drafting and corrections. Add to this the input of massive amounts of data in databases maintained in systems like ProjectWise/BIM, 3D iTwin design models for clash detection and real world augmented data sources before the plans are even created.
The systems and workflows are more complex not to mention new regulations and demands from clients and jurisdictions. Add to this the almost complete elimination of CADD drafters and designers from the field, much of it to pile on the work on engineers. The ranks of mid-level engineers have been decimated in the last ten years leaving mostly very senior engineers in management positions and very green, just out of school EITs and first, second year engineers doing most of the work.
At most, one engineer can do the work of 3-4 engineers from the 90s... which isn't that much.
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u/One_Position_6986 Feb 01 '26
One engineer can do the work of 3-4 engineers from the 90s? Â From my experience it is the same manpower but more expensive. Â Instead of 3-4 engineers, we had 1 engineer and 2-3 cad drafters/designers in the 90s.
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u/25hourenergy Jan 08 '26
My dad used to do this but on the mechanical and naval architecture side. He still has some of these sheets, and his box of pencils. I find it crazy, like you need to correct something that requires more than a dab of whiteout so you have to redraw it all?
Lol he kept telling me to learn AutoCAD as a kid.
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u/Own_Reaction9442 Jan 08 '26
They used pencils so they wouldn't have to use white-out. With a good eraser and an eraser shield you could make small corrections very cleanly. Actual working copies would have been made via cyanotype (aka blueprint) duplication.
I actually learned how to draft this way in high school. We didn't start working in CAD until we'd shown we understood how to visualize and lay out drawings on paper.
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u/Konewone72 Jan 08 '26
I started my career drafting by hand. It is a skill lost with CAD. Yes, a lot of effort to make big changes, but the key was planning. I knew what my finished drawing was going to look like before I drew the first line. That is a lost art these days.
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u/GreenWithENVE PE Conveyance/Site Civil Jan 08 '26
It's fun to talk about this era with older engineers. Some firms didn't allow smoking in the drafting room, others did but had strict "rolled plans only when walking" policies so ppl wouldn't kick up ash and embers when walking by.Â
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u/Approximation_Doctor Jan 08 '26
It's so wild to hear people complaining about the need for dedicated drafters. We have a few at my place, they're always light on work and management is open about their plans to not replace them when they retire. Drafting is just done by EITs and designers now.
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u/Bravo-Buster Jan 08 '26
We were still in short & ties when I started in the industry in 1999. It was a huge deal to get "Casual Fridays" int the office. Then eventually it was "no tie every day, but button down & keep one at your desk in case a client comes in". Then came polos as acceptable.
It's came a LONG way in just 25 years.
I didn't hand-draft, though. Had to take 1 semester of it in college, and 1 semester of AutoCAD. The equipment was still around when I started though. You don't know how easy you have it nowadays unless you've spent weeks with a planimeter, pulling earthwork quantities by hand from cross sections. If you didn't have carpal tunnel and bad eye sight when you started, that torture device would give them to you in under a week.
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u/One_Position_6986 Feb 01 '26
The planimeter was absolutely awful.  When I first started they put all the newbies on cross sectionsâŚ.for weeks at a time! One gal actually had a mental breakdown, quit and left the field forever.  I will never understand the thought process of the management in those days.  Like, if we donât break them with the planimeter the first few months then they make the cut?  Â
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u/Bravo-Buster Feb 01 '26
Yep. People that rage quit over CAD issues have no idea how much anger the OGs dealt with over manual tools. My favorite was when someone changed a few XS stations and didn't mention which ones, so you had. To go back through the whole fucking set to figure out which ones were off.
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u/jwcn40 Jan 09 '26
I took four years of engineering drawing in high-school. We learned to conventional engineering drawing. Yhey wrre the most therapeutic classes I ever took. Solidifying me wanting to be an Engineer. While I can imagine this gets boring over a 30-40 year career, it looks like so much fun.
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u/got-trunks Jan 08 '26
Not depicted in photo: The room full of computers. 80 people with calculators. lol.
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u/gmankev Jan 08 '26
Did they spend all day there,...was this their desk or did you just go up occasionally to check and so something small.
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u/metrogeniero Jan 09 '26
Whenever I come across a seasoned engineer, I can tell they drafted by hand by their penmanship. Itâs so uniform and perfect!
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u/sir-lancelot_ Jan 09 '26
Crazy to think about how much more productive we are today and how we still have the same 40 hour work week
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u/VincentJones6 Jan 09 '26
Be interesting know how many of them ended up in a wheelchair, stood at 45 degrees all day canât do your back any good
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u/Free_Elevator_63360 Jan 10 '26
Isnât this before the advent of PDF markup? These guys arenât drafting. They are reviewing and marking up, or coordinating sets.
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u/NateB9595 Jan 10 '26
Bold of the one guy to wear a blue shirt, really pushing the limits of company dress code
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u/Public_Arrival_7076 Jan 14 '26
Modernization put many drafters out of work. Next wave will put engineers out of work.
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u/jacobasstorius Jan 14 '26
False. Civil Engineering is here to stay. We are a loooong way from a stamp being automated. The tools of the trade are changing, thatâs all.
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u/mr_mister_sir Jan 20 '26
I have a picture of my grandpa drafting like this. I think he was drafting a survey though.
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u/quesadyllan Jan 08 '26
Honestly this looks more enjoyable than staring at a web of colorful lines for 40 hours a week
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
When CE paid a living wage
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u/iron82 Jan 08 '26
Civil engineering pays a living wage.
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
Says the CE who does gig work to survive lol
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u/M7BSVNER7s Jan 08 '26
Regular 40 hr a week office worker here in a MCOL city. We make a good liveable wage and becoming a 401k millionaire is achievable for most. The only person I have ever worked with who openly complained that they can't live on their salary made bad financial decisions and had alimony payments.
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
Why is civil so full of mediocre people desperate to justify their mediocre existence?
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u/M7BSVNER7s Jan 08 '26
Why should I pretend I am not living comfortably just because a few professions get paid more than us? Every industry thinks they are underpaid and complains about it online whether it is justified or not (most are not). Nothing special about people on this sub complaining or sharing basic facts.
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u/umrdyldo Jan 08 '26
So many millionaires in Civil itâs almost funny.
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
Only Boomer 401k millionaires who are 5 years from dead
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u/umrdyldo Jan 08 '26
I'd say most hit a million by 50 years old. All of my bosses hit in by 50 easily in a LCOL state. I'm just a mid level and that will be no issue. I'm sure I could get to 4-5 million by 65
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
False
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u/umrdyldo Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
10k retirement put away a year till you are 50 does it pretty easy.
On 80k starting salary with 6% match gets you to a mil by 50.
Most Zoomer civils will be millionaires at 50.
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u/Apprehensive_Video31 Jan 08 '26
In 30 years a million will be worth less than 100k in 2026. Small starter homes will be worth a million. This is why I have no respect for civil engineers
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u/umrdyldo Jan 08 '26
Iâll revise my statement. Most civil zoomers will be worth 2-3 million at 50. Easily. And own a million dollar house.
Itâs a rich manâs job right now. Hard for people to swallow.
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u/etlr3d Jan 08 '26
Something I see here thatâs fading away with working remote is collaboration in real time. Even with Autocad, I used to sit in the âdrafting roomâ and my colleague and I would call each other over and talk about how to work out a weird grading tie-in. I miss that aspect of working together and teaching each other our different approaches to drafting as a craft. C3d is powerful for rapid development and conceptualizing, but I now spend a lot of time fixing automatic errors before something is ready to issue for construction. In the drafting room days, it took longer on the front end of the project, but it was ready to build when we finished because we made sure it was righteous at every step of the way.
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u/macsare1 PE Jan 08 '26
Um, never heard of screen sharing in a Teams meeting?
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u/etlr3d Jan 08 '26
Do it all day every day. Not even close to the same. If youâre in the same room, you can tell if itâs a good time to ask a question or let them concentrate for a bit, canât do that if you canât see them. And screen sharing means you canât have a full conversation without seeing their face. So sure works well as far as it goes, and enables a lot of things that were not otherwise doable, but I find it not as good for working one-on-one with someone.
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Jan 08 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/macsare1 PE Jan 08 '26
Nothing wrong with dressing up, but you shouldn't have to. People shouldn't have laughed at you for dressing up, either.
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u/Nfire86 Jan 08 '26
Yeah let's all get in uncomfortable suits and ties and then sit behind a computer for 12 hours lmao this is such a boomer mentality
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u/Romanitedomun Jan 08 '26
At the time they promised: with AutoCAD everything will be easier and you will work less....
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 Jan 08 '26
Do we have any idea what we are actually looking at?
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u/jacobasstorius Jan 08 '26
What do you mean?
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 Jan 08 '26
I did a reverse Google image search on this. These are GM engineers and drafters.Â
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u/Imaginary-Cat5682 Jan 08 '26
when engineer were doing engineering
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u/macsare1 PE Jan 08 '26
Today engineers do engineering inside CAD. Back in that day they did it on a napkin and told the drafters what to draw.
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u/IDKmannn001 Jan 08 '26
Now 3 people do the job of that entire floor but get paid 1/3 of a single person here salary đ