That time a senior drafter told me my lineweights were 'muddy' and I had to rethink everything

3 comments

3 Comments

1983, my first real drafting job, I had a senior guy named Frank who told me my lines looked like they were drawn with a wet sponge. He didn't even look at my settings, he just pointed at the blueprint and said "fix that." Took me three days to realize my plotter driver was set for architectural A instead of full-size ANSI D. So I get it, you can have all the right numbers in the file and still end up with a muddy mess if the machine is lying to you. But honestly, the senior drafter was probably just using an old school term for "your lines look terrible, sort it out," which is a lot faster than a full lecture on plot styles. Sometimes the blunt feedback is the most helpful kind, even if it stings a bit.

grace_allen2mo ago

Wait, isn't "muddy" more about the ink bleeding or the line being too thick in general, not the actual lineweight number? Like, if your lineweight is set to 0.25mm but the plotter driver is set to the wrong paper type or you're using a shitty pen, it'll come out looking like a blob no matter what value you entered. I had a guy once argue his lineweights were perfect while his viewport scale was set wrong and everything printed at double size. You sure the drafter didn't mean your plot settings were off instead of blaming the lineweight values themselves?

samjohnson2mo ago

Check your plot style table first, paper size mismatch will wreck the cleanest lineweights.