The original note, as written at the time
In the drafting interface directly we could start by creating an annotation frame system. This is an editable virtual lattice that is separate from the graphics lattice. This means that when one is dimensioning, annotating, marking, they do not do this in the walls themselves. It is on this lattice that all this is done. You can then work with this lattice to align your 2D and 3D graphical elements.
Ongoing development
In the drafting interface, start with an annotation frame system: an editable virtual lattice, separate from the graphics lattice, on which all dimensioning, annotation and marking happen.
The separation is the entire idea and it fixes something that has wasted more hours than any other detail in drawing production. Annotation sits in the same space as the geometry, so the two collide. A dimension collides with a wall, a hatch collides with a label, and the drawing is tidied by dragging things around by hand, one at a time, every time the model changes.
Put annotation on its own lattice and the collisions vanish. The annotation can be aligned, gridded, layered and spaced by rule rather than by eye. And the geometries and the annotations can then be related deliberately — moved together when that is wanted, and held apart when it is not.
What that buys is a drawing that survives change. The model updates, the geometry moves, and the annotations on their lattice can be re-attached rather than re-placed. That is the difference between a drawing process and a drawing salvage operation.
The second gain is a clean layer for a machine to work on. Annotation is the part of drafting that is most rule-bound and most repetitive, so it is exactly what an intelligent tool should handle — and it can only handle it if it has a surface to work on that is not the building.
This is unglamorous and it is the kind of idea that makes everything after it possible. Standards, automation, review, measurement: all of them live on the lattice.