Let's say you're spending your weekend on a home hardware project. You know the kind of thing - dremel in hand, you're ready to cut holes in panels or drill positions for screwholes to assemble your latest hardware project.
You know that what you *should* do is use some kind of CAD package - or at the very least, do a good drawing with ruler and finelines - to make sure you get all the holes in the right places and everything fits together...
But you want to use that Dremel, dammit!
I have a solution for the incredibly lazy engineer, who at least has access to a photocopier[^1] or a scanner/printer.
Just put your components - screwholes, mounting lugs 'n all - on your copier, hit copy (1 to 1 scale of course), and hey-presto - instant templates to cut out and glue, that you can use to line up that drill or jigsaw.[^2]
{{< figure src="img/2020-05-31-scanningcomponents.jpg" caption="Scanning your components..." captionPosition="right">}}
{{< figure src="img/2020-05-31-componenttemplates.jpg" caption="...makes for easy cutting templates" captionPosition="right">}}
[^1]: Does anyone still call them photocopiers? [^2]: Does this qualify as a lifehack?
--------------------