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