Design is more than just operating design tools.

Throughout most of the Industrial Revolution, and even before that, anything needing to be built more than once with any sort of repeatability required detailed drawings showing the object to be made in several views, annotated with various dimensions describing with precision the measurements to verify the finished product.

As recently as the early 1980's, most new products and buildings were still being designed this way by dirty-fingered "draftsmen" hunched in a cloud of cigarette smoke over their inclined drafting boards. All the hardware of the entire Apollo moon program was designed this way -- all the rockets, launch pads, assembly buildings, computers, cabling, plumbing, cameras, radios, every button, transistor, plug, wire, hose, and label ... all designed on paper by somebody who first had to learn how to work a drafting board.

Today, things get designed by creating computer models entered through obscure commands and key strokes. Hand-drafting is no longer needed now that a computer can render an image to a photographic level with full animation. In an age when robots build things, even the concept of drawing detailed views and fabrication instructions is becoming obsolete as we learn how the models themselves can contain all the instructions needed to fabricate the design.

Yet, this has not ended the need for clear-thinking. People can create non-functional computer models just as easily as they could once create incorrect drawings. The tools of the trade continue to change over the years, but the fundamental requirement for a coherent thought-process is still the same.

Although they are related, design is more than just operating design tools.

Ken Ramsley