Try Plotting at a Smaller Scale

If only it was this easy!  It reminds me of the carpenter who cut the board twice and it was still too short.

...and the related story my dad used to tell of the new guy on the construction crew who cuts the board too short so his boss sends him to the superintendent to ask for a "board stretcher".

...or the electrician who instructs his apprentice to "wipe up the voltage drops".

...or the engineer who's told his design is an ID 10 T solution.

...or the new attorney who's sent to fetch a stack of "verbal agreement forms".

Going Manual

These days, if the computer's down, nothing gets done.  Thankfully, there's Etch A Sketch - the pioneer in flat panel monitors.  ...and they're sleek and energy efficient!  Besides, if you're doing a piping diagram, it looks a lot like Etch A Sketch anyway.  

This guy's like the solitaire-playing receptionists who had to "go manual" with actual playing cards since their computers were down. 

A Revised Version of the Revisions

Every so often we get a project where the seemingly constant design changes don't end until the building is occupied and the builder has packed up and left the site.

Do It Yourself Engineering

No matter the project, if the goal is an economical design and the assurance that the building will actually work as intended, you should retain the services of a reputable architect and engineer. The relatively small price for quality design is money well spent.
.
I've seen many well intentioned but seriously misguided souls willing to invest millions in their project, who believe they'll "save money" by having their nephew who took high school drafting draw the plans and then hiring the cheapest engineer they can find.
.
For more on why cheap engineering is not cheap, click here.

Might Not Be the Latest Drawings...

The inspiration for this came from a large project where the contractor created several headaches for himself and for us because he was building from an old set of drawings.

..

When this cartoon was originally drawn,s I called the cartoon contractor Terry (coincidence?) instead of Bob.

Actual Size

I borrowed the idea for this one, but it's not too far from a real event that happend a few years back...

.

I was called to a job site to look at a steel column that had been erected but just didn't look right to the contractor. When I arrived, the first thing I saw was what looked like a giant stiff steel flag hanging off of the side of a 30 foot tall column - like something you would see in 'Toon Town at Disneyland. It looked so ridiculous all I could do was laugh. It turned out that due to a CAD error, the dimensions for an 8 inch x 10 inch steel gusset plate were shown on the drawings as 8 feet x 10 feet. Amazingly, no one ever thought to question anything until the "flag" column was erected.

See Architect for Depression

Let's just say that there's this engineer I know who snickers just a little whenever he sees the note on structural plans that was the inspiration for this cartoon.

This Side Up

His next call will be to the structural engineer for a "fix".