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12 September 2003

Mechanical Drawing the Old-fashioned Way: Drawing Views

by Brian Mansfield

The purpose of a mechanical drawing is to show the design intent pictorially. One way to do this is to choose certain views of your subject that show interesting features. The simplest of these views can normally be labeled front, back, top, bottom, left and right. Normally, we don’t show all of these views on a single drawing. Instead, we choose 2 or 3 of these views that are 90o from each other like front, top and right. For instance, if we have a part such as the one in Figure 1, we can label the front, top and right views seen in Figure 2. Looking along these views, the part would look like Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure5.

Figure 1: A simple part. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 2: A simple part with views labeled. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 3: Front view of the part. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 4: Top view of the part. Click image to enlarge.

 

Figure 5: Right side view of the part. Click image to enlarge.

 

 

Note in the figures, only the visible lines are shown. Obscured lines is the subject of a future article.

Normally, these views are assembled and aligned onto one drawing. This is seen in Figure 6. This drawing is called an Orhographic Projection. Figure 7 shows the same drawing but with various construction lines to show how the drawing is aligned. These construction lines are very useful during the construction of the drawing, but are erased in the final production ready drawing. Note once a feature is created in one view, it can be projected using construction lines into another view. The construction lines are extremely useful and really cut down on the amount of measuring.

 

Figure 6: Orthographic projection of the part. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 7: Orthographic projection of the part with construction lines. Click image to enlarge.

So what if a feature doesn’t appear in the front, top or right view? Tune in next time for, "Different Kinds of Lines for Different Kinds of Jobs".

Homework: Create orthographic projection drawings of the parts in Figure 8, 9 & 10. Note the red lines are shown for measurement purposes only. These lines should not show up in your drawing.

Figure 8: Problem 1. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 9: Problem 2. Click image to enlarge.

Figure 10: Problem 3. Click image to enlarge.