Drafting tools and techniques
Drafting tools and techniques have gone through a lot of changes since personal computers became popular. We dont use slide rules anymore and sepias and track machines are a thing of the past but some drafting equipment remains with us.
The computer age has brought some cool new tools as well. Heres some links to useful drafting aids and techniques both new and old.
The venerable Machinerys Handbook is still a great tool and plenty of draftspersons, estimators, engineers and some architects still use this cornucopia of mechanical information all packed into this thick little book shaped. All this despite the fact you can find a lot of the information in the book all over the internet.
If you have to do a lot of field measuring, a laser measuring tool can make your life a lot easier. In this article I describe this more recent addition to our arsenal of tools. I give my opions of the tool I use and give some suggestions about other devices that are available.
Drafting symbol software packages can be very useful to keep the repetitive work at a minimum
The engineering scale and the architects scale explained. No 1:3 is not a proper scale even if your CAD system says it is. Why we still need to use these tools in an age where CAD systems supposedly draw everything perfectly to scale.
Having sat in some uncomfortable chairs in my time, I offer some suggestions on what makes a good place to sit and make your drawings
Drafting paper was supposed to be a thing of the pat, everything would be done on the computer we heard. Here is information about the different types of drafting paper or media, both for hand drafting or for use in wide format printers.
