Drafting

The act of creating a technical drawing is reffered to as Drafting, hense the name of the class, Engineering Drafting.  A technical drawing consits of a boarded paper with a title bar and dimensioned views of the part.  The most common views consit of  front, top,  right or left, and an isometric views, which are placed according to which view.  The first view placed is the main view which is usually the front view which is determined by the longest side.  The top view is place directly above the front and the right or left view is placed directly beside the front on the side that the image depicts.  The draft below depicts this set up.

Other views used to covey more complicated parts include section views and detailed views.  A section view is when the part has been hypothetically cut to reveal the interior details of its features.  A detailed view is when you have a close up image of a certain area that has a feature that otherwise might be overlooked. When taking section or detailed views the area they are taken from must be labeled with an identifier and the view must be labeled accordingly and should have the type of view and the scale.

Below is the hair dryer I created and its draft which contains a variety of views.

Inventor Part Files

I am now able to create parts on my own from dimensioned isometric views and have created some pretty cool parts.  I have worked with embossing which is basicly adding brail to your piece. A lot of the parts I have created look really sophisticated and hard to draw yet they are really easy once you understand the fillet command.  The fillet command allows you to round an edge which can make the simplest of parts look more complicated.  Also, I learned about the shell command which does just what it sounds like it does.  I used the shell command to hallow out my hair dryer (see image below).  I have learned a lot about the different commands you can use to create different parts. 

Below are some of the parts I have created.

Inventor

I have started working in Inventor.  First I completed some of the online tutorials to help familarize myself with the software updates; though I have used Inventor some before in my other engineering classes, in the previous drafting classes AutoCAD was the design program used mostly to create models in 2D and is the program I have had the most experience with. 

The transition between programs is not too difficult as both programs operate pretty similarly.  Though my heart will always be with AutoCAD, my first love, both programs are design software that allows drafters to create models that can then be manufactured based on the file.  Models can be drawn in Metric or English units, 2D or 3D, and with graphing lines on or off; these are just some of the features these design programs offer.

In AutoCAD the user had to be more knowledgeable as drawing lines color and thickness had to be choosen based on the type of line, for example dimension or section lines.  Though this could be a pain at times, it was very handy when the model being designed was complicated because the line colors could be changed and therefore easier to distinguish between the actual model and construction lines.  Inventor on the other hand designates the line color based on whether the line in constrained (blue) or unconstrained (lime green), below the picture shows a box where two of the lines are blue and two are green, this is because the two blue lines are constrained to the origin (0,0), whereas the two green lines are only connected to other lines and are therefore movable.



In the Inventor Tutorials I have learned sketch constraints and direct manipulation which I have some models to show for my progress.  Each model starts as a single sketch and from there is extruded or build outward, making it a 3D model.  From here another sketch can be made on the part or a plane which can be extruded as well or used for referance for another sketch or hole.  Another feature I have worked with is the fillet command which is used to round edges.

After the Part Tutorials I was proficient enough to complete several models by myself. 

Below are some of the drawings I have completed so far.

^Direct Manipulation Tutorial^

 DWG 4

DWG 5

The Next Class - 3D Modeling

My senior years off to a start with the third course in the Drafting series: 3D Modeling.  It has been a while, as last year I decided to change it up by taking Applications of Engineering, that was definitely a different experience and I am excited to get back to the heart of engineering: drafting. 

I jumped right into the curriculum this year with threads!  I started by calculating the tolerances and allowances of the hole and shaft and then finding the maximum and minimum clearance/interference.  Though this is not hard, it is very tedious because the numbers are to thousands of an inch and easily mixed up.  After working with this some I moved on to threads, learning about the different kinds and their uses, along with other thread properties.  Ever heard of "lefty losie, righty tighty"? I am sure you have. This is true for most screws which have right handed threads, but some screws are made with left handed threads, though, from my understanding left handed threads are mostly used in mechanisms. The toilet handle for example, has a left handed thread so that when the handle is pushed down the screw is not loosened. And this is just SOME of the information I have learned so far, along with this, I have already learned how to draw a Hex Head Bolt with a standard thread and am working on another with an ACME thread.  It was pretty intimidating at first, but I found drawing a thread by hand was much easier than it looked once I knew what I was doing.

So here's my first drafted thread and my second one is on the way--so stay tuned for more exciting informational drafting!