 As ship design evolved from craft to science, designers learned various ways to produce long curves on a flat surface.Generating and drawing such curves became a part of ship lofting; "lofting" means drawing full-sized patterns, so called because it was often done in large, lightly constructed mezzanines or lofts above the factory floor.When aircraft design progressed beyond the stick-and-fabric boxes of its first decade of existence, the practice of lofting moved naturally into the aeronautical realm.