Visual Representation And Communication Of Ideas Through Technical Drawings

By Author: MIT AOE
Total Articles: 8
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Technical drawing is the process of composing plans of design and processes on paper which visually communicates how something functions or has to be constructed. Drafting is the visual language of industry and engineering. The people who deal with technical drawings both who design and tradespeople, may use technical standards that define practical symbols, perspectives, units of measurement, notation systems etc. his enables a drafter to use communicate in a comprehensive way using commonly used conventions that makes the design unambiguous and relatively easy to understand. This need of unambiguous comunication for functional purpose document distinguishes it from the expressive drawing of visual arts which can be subjective and have multiple meanings.

Engineers create the original design which is used to fully and clearly define requirements of engineered items. Engineering drawing is an activity which produces drawings, documents which communicates ideas from one mind to another. Technical drawings represent ideas visually which are understandable to others which follow conventions of technical drawings. Engineers ...
... design machine parts, composite structures or circuits which involves collaboration of several people the basic ideas can be hand sketched while creatively brainstorming but the details of the design should eventually be given in a format which is understood by all.

A technical drawing or more specifically an engineering drawing is important for an engineer to analyze and perform calculations on the design. For example, to calculate the maximum stress on a machine part, an engineer gathers information on materials, geometry , and forces on a part form an engineering drawing and does the calculation to determine if it will fail due to internal shear, compressive or tensile stresses. It is important for an engineer to modify design if needed working along with the team to modify geometry, materials or couplings to meet standards of safety, value and functionality.

In manufacturing, a technical design gives machine operators information to manufacture an item. The engineer has to see to it that the design does not require excessively difficult or complex manufacturing process. An engineering drawing should have sufficient views and acceptable surface finishes, tolerances and geometrics to be able to manufacture with the available equipment.