To start over completely with a new plan or approach after the current one has failed. It means abandoning the current strategy and beginning fresh with the planning process.
This phrase originated in the 1940s from a cartoon by Peter Arno in The New Yorker magazine, showing a military aircraft designer walking away from a crashed plane saying this line. The 'drawing board' refers to the drafting tables where engineers and architects would create their technical drawings and blueprints.
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