Mechanical Engineering

A good place to start is to look at the standards that apply to engineering drafting. Having done most of my engineering design and drafting training, starting in the 1970's and this training when employed in two different New Zealand Government departments, everything that left the drawing office was checked against, and had to comply with the British standard BS 308. Proper engineering always complies to relevant standards. As engineering - manufacturing on an industrial scale came mainly from the British and Germans during the industrial revolution, British and German standards set the format for most of the standards we use today. The British BS and the German DIN standards have basically morphed into the ISO standards we use today. Due to the initial exposure to BS 308 I prefer to produce my drawings using first angle projection, as was preferred in BS 308. I have always thought this to be better than the ( American) third angle projection. With the British having intelligently done away with their old Imperial system of units and gone over to the way more sensible S.I units the ISO standards are the better way to go.

With a quick search of the net I have come up with this : https://littlewordsfromme.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/e0750651202.pdf which is a book in pdf format from that well known British engineering book publisher Newnes. I have many books from this company in my technical library, all Newnes publications are great.

Take this from an experienced engineer, the purpose of a drawing is to effectively and clearly communicate the intent of the designer to the people who are building it. If a drawing does not do that it is failing at its one and only purpose. Ages ago, (1970's, 1980's even the 1990's for a while) there was no such thing as 3D modeling so 2D paper drawings was all there was and it was important to draw everything exactly one way so that people doing it by hand could do it in a timely manner. This is not the case anymore. With the advent of 3D modeling I can model and draw to perfection something in 10 minutes that would have taken someone in the 1970's a whole day to do. Because of this ISO, brittish, DIN, ANSI, first view, third view and all these other restrictive ways of drawing things are falling out of popularity in favor of specific company standards which will vary from company to company. As head of my engineering department it was my task to develop and maintain our companies own standards which center around clarity, simplicity, neatness and how easy they are to understand. Many older draftsmen get stuck in the mentality of "that's the way I've always done it" which ends up producing lots of cluttered drawings with excessive orthogonal and section views with detail views in every corner of the page and your production people have to play detective just to figure out what is going on. Clarity, simplicity and ease of understanding those are the principles you need to focus on.

Why invent more standards ?. The difference between a good drawing or a bad drawing is not down to standards. The skill, engineering, and manufacturing knowledge of the engineer - draftsman is the main influence on good or bad drawings. Some of the problems I have found in many drawings produced today is because so many of the engineer- drafting training today concentrates too much on the CAD software and not enough on the engineering behind producing good drawings. To make good manufacture drawings a good knowledge of the engineering behind the item and how it will be made are the main drivers behind good drawings. This underlying knowledge is what is required to convey the necessary information to build a project. Clarity, simplicity and ease of understanding all fit in with the existing standards but will only be achieved by an engineer - draftsman with the required engineering and manufacturing knowledge. Back in the pre-CAD days unskilled persons did not produce good drawings. Back then most drawing office managers checked all output and would not let any drawings out the door that were not up to standard, something that is not done as much today.

Engineering would be a complete mess without standards. The following of standards in engineering simplifies our world. Bolts, bearings, couplings and many other components following standards enables be to source these from anywhere, confident they will do the job. Standards in drawings enable me to understand any well produced drawing from any good engineer anywhere in the world, even if we don't speak the same language. Standards arn't the problem, but a lack of real engineering often is.

Еxactly