To carry on (and on and on [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ) with what I started above:

Shop drawings are supposed to be fabrication drawings produced to tell the shop floor folks exactly what to fabricate. Your design intent matters little to those folks. With regards to the shakers, they want to know things like are they to braze or solder, if the holes have to be reamed, and what level of finish is required.

Those shop drawings are usually produced by the shops engineering staff. They interpret the designers construction drawings and written specifications (which together with any instructions to bidders, made up the tender documents). Your rendering would not necessarily be part of those documents. The rendering more likely would have been used to satisfy a client, investors, or marketer that it is indeed a great design worthy of production. As you know, to convince them you might have to build a model or even have some samples fabricated.

In many design fields considerable development goes into this process. In my work we usually begin with significant amounts of written documentation that define the project requirements. Schematic drawings and sketches are used to identify possible design directions. These get progressively more detailed as the initial design ideas are developed. At some point the ideas are communicated to the client for approval. The necessary drawings to do that varies with the client. Sometimes what is needed is very detailed: It could be a rendering, a model, cad plans, sketches, a 3d cad model, or all of these. Other times, all that is needed is a few quick sketches.

In my work (architectural) we usually have to coordinate the design with a number of subconsultants. Designing buildings can involve large teams of people and Architects traditionally coordinated the activities of that team. When we have that role we are known in my part of the world as the "prime-consultant" and the other consultants contractually work for us. I work in a small office yet we have projects with design budgets exceeding a million dollars. (Only a small percentage is profit). To say there is much work in designing buildings is an understatement. The bigger and more complicated the project the more time it takes. The process however is similar whether it is a small coffee shop or a hospital.

Sometimes I wish all it would take is a rendering. My architectural renderings are almost always my own designs. That makes it easy to know the design intent. It is considerably harder to render someone elses design unless they provide you very clear drawings to work from. To do good work requires considerable information - more than is generally available at the time the rendering needs to be produced. That's where artistic licence creeps in. Most renderings are of proposed projects. Without the finished project as a reference makes the creation of such drawings quite different from copying a photo. Good full-time renderers are very accomplished at 'reading between the lines'. To be successful they have to communicate very well with the designer in order to understand the design well enough to draw it, when the design itself is not complete.

Anyways, I don't know if these thoughts are of interest to anyone. I'm a person who likes to have a sense of what other jobs entail - perhaps some of you do too.

Regards, Ross

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