My father is a retired mechanical engineer. He learned drafting with pencil and paper first; when he was 19 he drew some of the parachutes for the Apollo project. When I was a kid I saw that he even had a drafting table with all the accoutrements at home: templates, triangles, compasses, French curves, mechanical pencils and an electric eraser. (A handheld device with a powerful motor that spun a cylinder of eraser rubber; touching the spinning cylinder to the paper let you erase with blinding speed.)
He was an early adopter of AutoCAD when it came out, but in later years he would grouse about it. From his perspective, AutoCAD was merely a better pencil, but it wasn't better enough to justify the cumbersome user interface; it wasn't until the debut of Inventor that Autodesk released a tool that works the way an engineer thinks. When Inventor came out he got back into drafting and engineering work again on a contract basis in his 70s. His old-school expertise combined with his embrace of new technology made him a powerhouse on the team. Everyone looked up to him, even the fresh-out-of-college kids.
He was an early adopter of AutoCAD when it came out, but in later years he would grouse about it. From his perspective, AutoCAD was merely a better pencil, but it wasn't better enough to justify the cumbersome user interface; it wasn't until the debut of Inventor that Autodesk released a tool that works the way an engineer thinks. When Inventor came out he got back into drafting and engineering work again on a contract basis in his 70s. His old-school expertise combined with his embrace of new technology made him a powerhouse on the team. Everyone looked up to him, even the fresh-out-of-college kids.