Architecture and civil undergrads lose desk crits on lineweight, not on design.

I keep seeing the same three drawings in second- and third-year reviews:

1. A floor plan where walls, furniture, and dimensions are all the same thickness. From three feet away it is a grey rectangle. The critic cannot find the enclosure, so they never get to the idea.

2. A section that is a stretched elevation. Nothing is cut. The stair does not meet the slab. The ground line is the same weight as a window muntin.

3. A "detail" that is a blown-up wall with no materials named, no flashing, and a hatch that means "I was afraid of white space."

None of that is a talent problem. It is a template problem and a habit problem.

The fix is boring and it works:

• Build one template. Units, layers, plot styles. Open every project from that file.

• Draw walls as polylines and offset them. Stop stitching forty lines.

• Put annotation on its own layer and keep it off the drawing.

• Plot a PDF and look at it from across the room before you pin it up.

If you are heading into internship interviews this cycle, they will not open your DWG. They will open the PDF. If that sheet looks like a first-year lab plot, the portfolio never gets to the renderings.

That is what I built AutoCAD Mastery around — not a 40-hour software tour, the drawing habits that get a sheet through studio and onto a desk in an office. $29/month, course plus crits.

If you want a second pair of eyes on a sheet you already have, join and post it.