Part Drawings

After creating a 3-dimensional design in CAD software such as SolidWorks, Pro/Engineer, AutoCAD, CATIA, and so on, it is almost always necessary to create a part drawing of the model before machining it. A part drawing is a 2-dimensional representation of the 3-dimensional part which contains all necessary information required to build the part in a machine shop. Required information includes material type, units, dimensions, tolerances, scale, part name and all necessary views of the part which could also include cut-out section views. The part drawing should be prepared in such a way that a machinist should be able to precisely machine out the part just by looking at the information provided in it. Most CAD software have a feature to create a 2-dimensional part drawing from a 3-dimensional model. However, it is the engineer responsibility to make sure that the part drawing is accurate, clean and complete. Lack of information would make the part impossible to build based on the drawing itself, while too much information can make the part drawing difficult to read. Even though Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools are revolutionizing the machining industry, 2-dimensional part drawings are still largely used and very important. The part drawing is the major mean of communication between the design engineer and the machinist regardless of the machining process being used. Here are a couple of examples of part drawings that I have made using SolidWorks and were machined successfully.