PROCESS
Why we still draw by hand before we model
By Plinth Studio · Dec 2024 · 2 min read
A hand drawing can be wrong in a way a 3D model can't — and that's exactly why we start there.
Modelling software is precise by default. Every wall has a real thickness, every room a real dimension, the moment you place it. That precision is exactly what you don't want in the first hour of a design.
A pencil line doesn't commit you to anything. You can draw a room too small and not notice for twenty minutes, and that's fine — the looseness is the point. Bad ideas die faster on paper because nothing about the drawing defends them.
Once a plan survives a few rounds of hand sketching — once the relationships between rooms actually make sense — that's when it earns the model. By then the software is recording a decision, not making one for us by default.
It's slower, on paper. But we've never regretted the hour spent drawing badly before the hour spent modelling well.
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