Thursday, February 11, 2010

Architectural Design and Drafting

To be fully qualified in their work, the architectural drafter needs to have training and experience in a wide range of subjects related to drawing and construction.

1. He or she must be completely familiar with the principles of orthographic projection. This would include the relation of views, projections, sections, developed views, reflected views, Intersections of members of a structure, etc.

2. They have to know the Architectural Symbols, and the methods of representing various forms of construction.

3. They have to be acquainted with the history of architecture. This includes building practices that have succeeded as well as those that have failed the test of time.

4. They have to know the principles of pure and applied design.

5. They need to know various construction materials, their strengths, characteristics, limitations and various uses.

6. They should have a working knowledge of creating perspective drawings, how to shade them with shadows, and rendering so that a design can be better understood out side of the 2 dimensional plane of drafting.

Architectural drawing is not just a mechanical operation and neither is it a subject to be learned separately from architectural design. The subject of architectural placement and arrangement of visual elements of a building must go hand in hand with the ability to mechanically draw these elements.

About the Author
My name is Tim Davis and I draw architectural and mechanical plans for a living. I also teach others how to draw house plans, site plans, mechanical and shop drawings and other types of drafting that I have been trained to do in a virtual classroom on the internet called 101 Info Dot Org at http://101info.org

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