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Had a client tell me my line weights made his drawing look 'messy' - felt defensive at first, but he was right
I was doing a set of floor plans for a small commercial buildout in Portland and the guy was super picky from day one. He pointed out I was using the same pen weight for walls, furniture, and dimension lines. I told him it saved time but he pulled out this old blueprint from the 80s and showed me how a pro does it. Now I actually take the extra 5 minutes to set up layers with assigned widths before I start drafting. Has anyone else had a client teach them something they should have already known?
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michael5193mo ago
Got defensive reading this at first because I used to think line weights were just a preference thing, not a rule. But then I remembered a project where my plans looked like a tangled mess to the contractor and I blamed his reading skills. Turns out he was right, my section cuts looked the same as my interior elevations because I ran everything with the same 0.18mm pen. Now I keep a layer with thick walls at 0.35mm, medium for furniture at 0.18mm, and hairline for dimensions at 0.09mm. Have you settled on a specific set of widths you stick with or do you adjust it per project?
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wren6523mo ago
Hearing that your section cuts looked just like your elevations makes me cringe, @michael519. That's a hard lesson I've seen too many times where a whole set of drawings becomes a gray blur. I'm kind of shocked you ran everything at 0.18mm for a real project with a contractor pushing back. I stick with 0.5mm for heavy structural cuts, 0.25mm for main walls, and 0.05mm for annotations and dimensions. It might sound rigid but it saves me from redrawing entire sheets when people can't tell a door swing from a cabinet line. What about when you're working with a really complex floor plan with multiple layers of detail, do you ever bump those widths up or down?
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