Techinical Drawing and Sketching Primer

When I went to high school, it was a time when shop classes still existed and you could learn some skills essential for your future maker self. I think one of the most important skills to be gotten out of that was learning how to draw and read technical drawings(drafting), things like architect plans, blueprints, parts specifications. If you delved further in engineering, that same precision and attention to detail is carried out in things like exploded diagrams, flowcharts and circuit schematics. Being able to do this by hand involves creative thinking and it is what I feel that is missing when you toss someone a computer aided design (CAD) package to do the same task. Sure, CAD is a useful tool but I feel if you do not know the basics of the process behind it you miss the point of being able to design with your imagination.

Most of our shop teachers were veterans, you know, the curmudgeony type who was missing his cigar stogie because they wouldn't allow it in school. Anyway, we had one that told of his story of landing a
This is the proportionate measure that 1 inch on the drawing represents say, one foot or whatever. The drawing scale would be 1/12th size or the real object or if you draw everything 12 times larger, you would get the actual object size. There are some common modeling scale ratios and it really depends on what you want to fit on the paper. Of course, trying to fit the Empire State Building on a regular sheet of paper would require it to be scaled down a lot. Learn your metric measurements which are easier to scale rather than having to convert decimal or fractional inches/feet. By the way, common US door measurements are done by feet - inches. If you are looking for a 36 inch wide door, find a 3 - 0 sized door. A 32 inch wide door is expressed as a 2 - 8 door, and so on. Don't get me started on pipe