Paid $80 for a drafting template and it honestly saved my butt

I do hand drawn floor plans for local real estate agents and kept messing up door swings and window sizes. Dropped $80 on a plastic architectural template with all the common fixtures pre cut and my accuracy went way up in like a week. Has anyone else gotten burned skipping the right tool for the job just to save a few bucks?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane17013d ago

Nah I used to be one of those guys who thought templates were just for beginners or people who couldn't draw straight. Thought I could just freehand everything and it would look fine. Boy was I wrong. Bought a cheap ruler set and kept having to erase and redo stuff until my paper started looking like a war zone. Finally grabbed a proper template after my third messed up floor plan in a row and it was like night and day. The guide lines alone saved me so much time I honestly felt stupid for waiting so long. Sometimes you just gotta admit the pros actually know what they're doing with this stuff.

anthony_jackson3113d ago

Man @shane170 is spitting straight facts with this one. I was the exact same way thinking I was too good for templates until I spent an entire weekend trying to freehand a simple set of parallel lines and ended up with a crooked mess that looked like a kindergartner drew it. Templates are like cheat codes for drawing clean stuff, no shame in using them at all. Once you accept that the tools exist for a reason, life gets way easier.

laura_wilson12d ago

I actually see it the other way. I've been doing this for years and I never use templates. The problem isn't the tool, its that people rush. If you slow down and measure twice before drawing anything, you don't need a pre-cut plastic guide to tell you where a door swing goes. I can knock out a floor plan in under an hour with just a straightedge and a good pencil. Templates feel like a crutch that stops you from actually learning the proportions.