Geometric and Engineering Drawing. DOI:
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
10.1016/B978-0-08-096768-4.00025-5
Postscript – Planning a Design
Before beginning the drawings for a new design, whether you plan to use a CAD
program or pencil and paper on a drawing board, you need to know the answers to
key questions. So ask yourself the following:
(i) Who is the fi nished article for?
(ii) What is it for?
(iii) What do you want the end result to look like?
Now you can begin to ask yourself some more questions about details:
( a) What approximate size will it be?
( b) What will it be made of?
( c) How many parts will there be and how will you connect them together?
( d) What materials will be required?
( e) What finish will it have?
( f) Will it be packaged and how much protection is needed with the packaging, i.e. how strong
should it be?
Each of these questions raises a new set of questions and this book should help
you to answer some of them. For instance:
●
If you are designing a very large or very small object then Chapter 1 , on scales, might
help you with your plan.
●
If some of the shapes in your design are likely to contain geometric profiles then look at
Chapter 2 .
●
If the people who you are designing for would appreciate a pictorial view or views of your
ideas then look at Chapters 3 and 6 for ways of achieving this.
●
If any part or parts of your design involve a whole or part of a circle or circles (wheels,
gears, etc.) then check Chapter 4 .
●
If any part or parts of your design use belts, chains or straps then see if anything in
Chapter 5 can help you.
●
Making figures of all shapes bigger or smaller can be achieved with the techniques shown
in Chapter 7.
●
The outlines of designed objects are rarely composed of just straight lines or whole circles,
and ways that these can be blended together are shown in Chapter 8 .
●
The tracks taken by moving parts often need to be checked to ensure that parts do not jam
against each other. Techniques to plot these tracks, known as loci, are shown in Chapter 9 .
●
It is often important to show orthographic views other than the two main elevations and the
plan. Auxiliary elevations and the way to draw them is shown in Chapter 10 .
●
Shapes like parabolas (seen on suspension bridges and light reflectors), ellipses and
hyperbolas are all found by taking sections through a cone. How you do this is shown in
Chapter 11 .
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