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Warning: A senior drafter pointed out my dimensions were all from the same baseline and now I catch myself doing it every time
She said, "You're stacking tolerances" and showed me how shifting to ordinate dimensions on a machine base plate saved 0.015" of rework, has anyone else had an older drafter call out a bad habit you didn't even notice?
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claire_davis314mo ago
Lean into that peer review thing @harper914 mentioned, it's honestly the fastest way to break the habit before it gets baked into your workflow. Once you see your own print through a machinist's eyes, you'll never go back to stacking dimensions from the same stupid corner.
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king.eric4mo ago
...and then I went back and checked a drawing I did last week and sure enough, I had everything coming off the same edge like some kind of dimensioning toddler. My tolerances were basically stacked into a little pyramid of failure. I felt about two inches tall when I realized how long I'd been doing it without anyone saying a word. Your mileage may vary but having someone call out a blind spot like that is honestly a gift, even if it stings a bit at the moment.
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blair_nguyen4mo ago
Your tolerances were basically stacked into a little pyramid of failure" got me laughing because I've definitely been there. But here's something nobody's brought up yet - that baseline habit might hurt you more on the shop floor than in the design stage. I watched a machinist once have to flip a part three times just to hit all my dimensions because they were all clustered from one corner. He said it was like trying to read a map where every landmark is in the same town. Switched to ordinate and the guy actually thanked me on the next print.
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