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Talked to a carpenter who thinks we over-detail everything | Drafters - Free To Speak

Talked to a carpenter who thinks we over-detail everything

I was at a job in Portland last week, and the lead carpenter told me, 'Your prints are beautiful, but we build from the big shapes down, not the small details up.' He said a complex wall section with 30 callouts just gets ignored on site. It hit different because I spent 12 hours on that exact drawing. Maybe we focus too much on perfect CAD and not enough on what the crew actually needs to see. Has anyone else had a builder push back on your level of detail?

4 comments

4 Comments

samflores5mo ago

Man, that's just how it goes sometimes. You put all that work in and the guy on site basically says it's art, not a plan. But is it really a big deal? If the wall gets built right and passes inspection, maybe those 30 callouts were just for you. I've seen crews build perfect stuff off a sketch on a 2x4. They know the steps. We might be drawing for ourselves, or for the next architect, not for the hammer swinging.

alicecraig4mo ago

Read an interview with an old contractor once who said the best set of plans he ever got was six pages, all hand drawn, and the building still stands 40 years later. Makes you wonder if all that CAD detail is just a crutch for not knowing how to talk to the crew. Half the callouts on my recent project were just dims for things the framers eye out anyway. If the carpenter did two stories of the same wall before your drawing even hit the trailer, all that detail is just noise.