E-Sheets and Output Gods

In this day and age, is there anything that really has to be on an E-Sheet?

I do as much work as possible on C-Sheets, you know, something that might fit on a desk. E-Sheets are more appropriate for say covering your car when it snows. I ran some output the other day. A three drawing package, on 3 E-Sheets, a .pdf file, generated from Vectorworks - which would be a different rant.

If there are going to be 3 sheets wouldn't it be ok to to more, smaller sheets? I can almost understand trying to get everything on one page. Many people might tell you I am to a certain amount obsessed with trying to get everything on one page, but once you roll over the one page line can't you start thinking about smaller sheets?

I could understand an argument that goes "its a working drawing, and these things need to be in that relationship and in a reasonable scale in order to do the work." But if the drawings are computer generated it is possible to maintain those relationships in the model, and scale is moot. Neither has anything to do with output.

This is I guess one of those things that is simply tradition, and won't change. I should not be cranky about it. I probably would not have been set off if they had been vector files. But consider the file size of a 48"x36" raster image - even a fairly compact image like a .pdf. It took more then an hour to print three pages. rrr. Files that big anger the printing gods. I had to get out my chicken bones - and thank goodness nobody was there to see the dancing.

That deserves an explanation. Drawing output turns out to be a recurring problem. In a multi-platform, multi-user (especially student user) environment you just have to assume you're going to have problems. I explain to classes that sometimes things just won't work and even after you get it to work you won't know what was wrong. That happened to me this time. The first couple of times I sent the file it processed from the app, went through the network, processed in the plotter, and then simply vanished: poof! So I played with this and that and eventually got the thing to work, but I couldn't tell you what the problem actually was.

Inevitably it has something to do with the game of telephone that the app plays with the OS plays with the network plays with the output hardware, complicated by memory and processing restrictions for very large files.

Or, it could be angry output gods.

Seems like just as reasonable a reason sometimes. In class I sometimes explain that you're just as likely giving some sort of sacrifice or demonstration of faith to the output gods as doing anything else - strip down and dance around the plotter clicking chicken bones. It's a joke, but sometimes it really feels like it might be more effective.

I have a personal campaign against E-Sheets. In my classes I cap acceptable output at D-Sheets. Join my crusade, save a tree, pacify the output gods.