By Unfocussed Mike, 1731509680
I am posting this in General Off Topic because it’s not really quite a photography thing. But I think we’re all people with different experiences and lives who have photographic things in common one way or another, so read it that way if you prefer.
I only have “the concepts of a plan” for this post... but: how do you approach methodology?
Are you someone who is particularly methodical and methodological — that is, how do you feel about following instructions and designing methods for yourself? Do you stick to the recipe, do you prefer to understand the concepts in the recipe so you don’t have to stick to it, or do you just wing it?
How have you found that learning a method properly has had compounding benefits later on? Is there something in your creative/hobby life you know you have to go back and learn properly one day, to help you get further?
What is your tolerance for helping people who have complex problems but seem to have dodged some methodology that might have avoided the entire problem? How do you approach explaining this to people?
The non-compulsory backstory to this post is below. Feel free to TL;DR! But if you have stories about this (I can think of several from my day job), please do tell them. Like: really from any domain. Music, makeup, creative writing, woodworking, database design...
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Non-compulsory TL;DR back-story:
I am in a really helpful group on Facebook, for FreeCAD. This is powerful but really idiosyncratic software, that can do amazing things but does require a certain level of engagement. It's a bit of a lifestyle choice.
The super short summary of CAD is that one approach involves drawing things in two dimensional “sketches”, and then transforming them into a third — e.g. a cube is a 2D square that is stretched in its third dimension, a cylinder is the same but from a circle, a sort of flower sketch can make a cog. You can make complex things by combining the solids made this way.
If you are approaching this methodically, you can use tools to “constrain” these sketches by giving extra measurements and guide rules (this line is 10mm long; these two lines are parallel; these two are at right angles; these two circles share the same centre point, etc.). You can also tell the package that some geometry is shared between two sketches, so it knows two points are the same in 3D space, two lines are on the same line, two flat surfaces are on the same plane, etc. These tools can be complicated, and you can go without! But they can help the CAD package efficiently solve the very complex problem of making the 3D object. Without them, things can be very weird, because, you know, maths.
Someone has come into the group with just such a weird problem in a quite complex design. They aren’t at all ungrateful (the opposite!) and the design is beautiful so they must be bright, but when I pick through it to understand the problem I am struck by the way they have avoided using these tools.
It’s understandable to avoid them as they can be confusing and time-consuming at first, and I can’t be sure that using them will fix the problem they are experiencing, though I suspect it will. I can’t know for sure that they don’t know the value of what they aren’t doing, but I find it surprising they’ve got that far without them.
But my greater feeling is that if they were engaging with these tools, they would likely have some insights into how to how to solve their problem. I want to say “you should really consider going back to basics a little here!”
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
