The Art of Precision: Why I Treat CAD Like Painting

People often like to draw a clean line between artists and technicians. One side lives in chaos and feeling; the other in rulers, numbers, and cold certainty.

I have never believed that split.

Lately, I have been spending my evenings at an easel, trying to capture winter light on snow-covered hills. It is messy work—paint everywhere, constant second-guessing, wiping things off the canvas and starting over. Yet the longer I stand there mixing colours and chasing subtle gradients, the more I realize I am using the exact same instincts I rely on when I’m deep in an Onshape session, modelling a tricky bracket for a vintage motorcycle or reverse-engineering an obsolete part.

In both places, the challenge is the same: to see something clearly in your mind before it exists in the real world and then bring it into being with intention.

As I prepare to take Axis and Datums full-time in 2026, I have been writing down the principles that have guided me for years. I do not have an engineering degree on my wall, but I do have a stubborn obsession with how things are made—and remade. If you are someone restoring a classic machine or turning a sketch into a working prototype, this is what you can expect when we work together.

1. Avoiding the Trap of the “First Idea”

We have all felt it: a problem lands in front of you, and your brain immediately serves up an answer. It feels efficient. It feels smart.

• The drafting brain says, “Just model it.”
• The business brain says, “Get it done and send the invoice.”

But jumping straight to that first idea is dangerous. It locks you into one path before you have fully understood the terrain. The result might work—barely—but it rarely feels inevitable, rarely feels like the best possible version of itself.

I have learned to force a pause. I will spend time studying the surrounding assembly, thinking about tolerances, material behaviour, and how the part will be manufactured. I ask questions most people skip: How does this piece move relative to its neighbours? Where will stress concentrate? What minor change in geometry could make machining easier or strength higher?

Only after I have framed the problem properly do I start drawing lines. That deliberate delay almost always leads to cleaner, lighter, more elegant solutions—and it saves far more time in revisions later than it costs upfront.

2. Craft as a Moral Choice

This might sound lofty for a post about mechanical design, but I genuinely believe good craftsmanship is a moral act.

The sociologist Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman, describes craftsmanship as “the desire to do a job well for its own sake.” That impulse runs directly counter to a lot of modern business pressure, which quietly encourages “good enough.” Ship it faster. Bill the hours. Move on.

I cannot work that way.

When a client hands me a worn, irreplaceable part from a 60-year-old machine and asks me to recreate it digitally, I feel real responsibility. That model must match reality down to the last measured dimension and captured intent. If it does not, someone downstream—maybe a machinist, maybe the client years from now—pays the price for my shortcut.

So, I measure twice (or five times), I verify against multiple references, and I build the model, so it is not just geometrically correct but also logically robust. Someone else should be able to open that file a decade from now and understand exactly how the part was meant to be made.

Quick is not the same as right. I choose right.

3. Form Follows Function—But Beauty Still Matters

Louis Sullivan’s famous line—“form follows function”—gets quoted constantly. And it is true: a part should be shaped by what it needs to do.

But notice he did not say function obliterates form. Well-resolved engineering often looks beautiful precisely because it is honest. A smoothly lofted manifold, a bracket with carefully placed lightening pockets, a fillet that transitions exactly where stress demands it—these things feel pleasing to the eye because they are truthful.

When I am painting, I build depth through layers of translucent colour, adjusting until the light feels convincing. In CAD, I build robust geometry through layers of thoughtful constraints, features, and relations until the model behaves exactly as the real part should.

Different tools, same underlying discipline: patient observation, iterative refinement, and a refusal to settle until it feels undeniably correct.

Looking Ahead to 2026

This way of working is not the fastest on paper, but it is the most dependable—and, I believe, the most satisfying for everyone involved.

That is why I am moving Axis and Datums to a full-time operation starting in 2026 and shifting to outcome-based pricing.

I do not want to charge you for every minute I spend moving a cursor. I want to partner with you to deliver a result you are proud of—one that respects the original design intent of your project, whether you are bringing a classic machine back to life or building something entirely new.

If that sounds like the kind of collaboration you are looking for, let us talk. I would love to hear about your project and how we might bring it into reality together.