Technically it still is. I just consider it to be in a different category than the type of drawings you do.
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yep. But i am sure you are good in proportions than me.
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Technical drawings are easy because you’re drawing exactly to a spec, so you know exactly how it should look. There’s no guessing and eyeballing it. If tech drawings were eyeballed, the first 747s would have fallen out of the sky like rain. Buildings wouldn’t survive a mouse sneeze and nothing would ever work. 
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why only 747?
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It was just an example. People don’t actually appreciate how old the 747 is.
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Tower Project
First Year
Oof. Here we go again. Sorry for the wait.
This next project has 2 parts: a study part (intended to teach us the importance of study models) and the final product. The initial prompt given to us for the first part was to design and construct a tower capable of supporting the size and weight of a cue ball six inches off the ground. And it has to be made out of spaghetti . This one was a fun project. I’ve built many popsicle stick and toothpick bridges in my day so I was excited. Used to the triangle and trusses I utilized so often in my bridge models, I immediately defaulted to those. Many others went straight for blocky towers causing them to be incredibly unstable and often shatter under the weight of the cue ball. I was unsure of my design at first but I soon realized that I greatly overestimated the weight of a cue ball . When competed my design could easily support much more than the weight of a single cue ball.
Unfortunately this is the only picture of it that I still have. It was designed in a plus shape from above and gently tapered in toward the top where I build a little basket to hold the cue ball. Upon realizing how strong it truly was, we were gonna test it with a bunch of concrete pieces around studio. However, it got knocked to the floor a few times by stray elbows and broke .
Once completing that first stage of the project we moved on to the real test: design and construct a tower capable of supporting the size and weight of a cue ball 3 feet off the ground. However, this time we were to use bass wood. In addition, it had to have a “skin” of a different material, a base, and a graphic representing it. I ended up sticking with a similar design to my spaghetti model except scaled up to 3 feet tall. The tower itself had 3 sections: the base, the body, and the head/basket. The skin was a thin plastic sheet I bought that I attached the sides, about a quarter inch off the main structure, emphasizing the “plus shape.” The base of the tower was a wooden cylinder with the top face cut at an angle. The tower attached to it with dowels along its base that inserted into the wooden base. Because of the angle cut into the wooden base’s top face some of the dowels were more exposed than others, giving it the look of a pier emerging from the water with a wave passing by (which was my inspiration for it).
I ended up building a few study models of each section out of my spaghetti (I still have some left over, I keep it just in case I need it for whatever reason ) to test out size and proportions. After I was satisfied I moved on to building the actual model. I think it was during this project that I realized my love and apparent talent for model making. I think it was a combination of my previous experience building various stick models and my perfectionist approach that really helped my models come out so well. The hardest part of this was definitely getting all the angles and lengths correct. Most were pretty straight forward, but the diagonal pieces were legit trial and error. I would cut out a bunch until one fit perfectly and then do my best to imitate that piece for the rest. Eventually, after a few weeks, working my way up one section at a time, it was completed.
Overall I feel alright about it. It isn’t my favorite project but still turned out pretty cool in my opinion. Now all that was left was the graphic representing our tower. This was left pretty open for what we wanted to do. Originally I wanted to create an artistic piece showing my towers unrelenting epicness. However, I soon realized that my lack of photoshop skills would prevent this from happening. After exploring a few different options I eventually decided to create a digital technical drawing that showed the structure of the tower. I wanted the graphic to show the side and top views of each section, with the side views having cutaways to show the structure of the tower beneath the skin. It took quite some time, mostly because I had no experience using Adobe Illustrator before this. I mostly self taught myself the program with my brother helping my a little bit when I came home for the weekend.
I ended up being pretty proud of the graphic. This was the first digital graphic I had every made so it was a new experience for me. It also gave me the opportunity to learn a new program. Illustrator has ended up becoming my favorite program to create these kinds of graphics with.
This was a pretty cool project, especially since it was my first taste of an individual architecture project in college. Many of the other kids in my studio chose a more artistic route, creating more artistic towers than my structural tower (realizing that bass wood didn’t need much structure to support a cue ball ). The others were all pretty dope for the most part. It was pretty interesting to see how different people interpret the same prompt like this. However I think that the sheer density of my structure coupled with its craftsmanship helped it stand out among the crowd. I actually still have it. Its sitting on the “architecture model table” behind me and my spaghetti study models are sitting next to me at my desk.
I still have a few free days before classes start back up for me and the next 2 projects are pretty short so I’ll try and get those up soon. Thanks for reading! 
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Hey!
I already thought about pestering you for a new one!
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So cool! 
It’s just awesome!
Thank you @jrtrussell for sharing!!
Donno way, but reading this really cheered me up!
I’m fitting weird.
Love your compassion into this, your way of explanation and the fun of reading it all.
Now I wait for @the_termin8r comments.
Some more fun!
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I’m really impressed man! Very talented and the way you did these papers for the mofa is just art imo- Respect 
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These are the sort of projects that weed out the idiots in your class that should know better. First ever project I did in uni, one of my group members straight up said we should copy something from online. 
I reckon it could have taken a few hundred grams, maybe even 500 (or a small bottle of water).
45 degree angles not the main size? Also don’t you guys have cutting jigs? Either way, the best way to replicate an angle is to get one right, then just use that piece as a stencil and use it to pencil your lines on the other pieces of wood with it.
You could have potentially improved stability if you’d assigned four sections to the base, then cut those at angle of a couple of degrees facing in towards the centre. That way the towers would all lean towards the same point in 3D space as the height tends to 3’.
To go overkill and to easily meet the ‘skin’ condition, you could have had a diagonal beam going from the middle of the outside face of each tower to ground and then longer ones from near the top of the same face to ground (so you’re essentially making a two-layer square-base pyramid around the main structure). Then just wrap cling film around the outer pyramid frame or something. Nobody will ever knock that down.
The story of every piece of specialised software you will ever come across, especially in uni. I had a MATLAB assignment earlier this year, I had to teach myself in one night what they were supposed to teach us in a year. In their defence, they gave us months to complete the assignment, but I was dealing with all the other assignments I had, and more importantly, my dissertation.
Does he do the same course?
Did you ever get to test its limits?
Lol, why?
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Why I get a blast following your conversation about architecture and engineering? 
I really don’t know. 
For now I go with weird.
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I meant, why my comments specifically, but I got my answer. lol
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idk, I would guess a bit more. Another one in my studio held like 3 concrete blocks (each prob 5 pounds) until it broke.
Nah, the sizes were wack. Very ugly angles and lengths. I had lines on my cutting board for 30, 45, and 60 degree angles, but I did not have a cutting jig. Some people had one with a mitre saw, but I just used a x-acto knife for all the cuts. I ended up doing something similar to what you suggest to cut the similar angles. Except to save time I just laid the correctly cut piece directly onto of the piece to be cut and just traced it with my knife.
lol, that would have taken forever Not to mention I would probably be kicked out of architecture for using cling wrap like that 
Also, these weren’t really intended for structure or strength. The strength of the basswood and the relative low weight of the cue ball pretty much allows any design to work successfully. It was more of a project to get us experience modeling and an opportunity to experiment with different materials.
Nah, he’s 2 years behind me. He’s just more tech savy than me and has more experience using these programs. We actually just moved him into his dorm today for his freshman year of college. He’ll be studying computer science.
Lol, nah. I don’t want to break it. It could probably hold a decent amount. I would predict that, due to its size and relative thinness, it would lean and topple over before its internal structure failed.
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I was playing around with some ice lolly sticks and superglue earlier. Where do I go to collect my architecture degree?
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Lol it’s on it way rn
Any particular goal with this or just straight up messing around?
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I want to get a multi-screen setup for my laptop. Wanted to know just how overkill I should go. So I made rough models of a 27" and a 24" because I had nothing better to do with my time.
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If you count this for a architecture degree, I want a Doctor for fixing a broken leg
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Multi-screen for a laptop? My bro has two monitors in his desktop for gaming purposes. Is the extra screen just for size or what?
Lol. I think we’re going further and further away from architecture into a makeshift/DIY thread looks good to me tho 
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I thought you fixed broken legs with a gun and not a ruler?
Multitasking and other things. constantly swapping between windows when going between docs is a pain, it’s even worse splitting a 15" screen into 4. And again, it’s also needless overkill. I’m planning on getting them for Xmas.
I’ll probably go for the 24s despite wanting the 27s. lol
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