When studying mechanical drawing, it's important to know what is involved in becoming a designer or drafter who, instead of just making drawings of the plans of others, is just as able to do original work themselves. To begin with, the ability to originate or make improvements on plans and designs can be developed by studying what others have done in this field. It often happens that the way we operate one device can be applied to some other devices which are used for a completely different purpose. This way, the original idea is made more useful because it's used for more than one purpose.
While this really isn't original work so to speak, the fact is that very few mechanical appliances are totally thought up by one person. Also, it may not always be a good idea in machine design to attempt to be entirely original but apply what's known with all certainty to be sound in theory and in practice. This doesn't mean that the inventor or designer should not think for themselves or that they should deliberately borrow the ideas of others, but simply that they should proceed with caution when attempting to improve or change entirely some commonly accepted method or principle which has been completely tested in practice.
The drafter whose work isn't limited simply to drawing lines on paper, has to have a working knowledge of mechanical principles, the various known methods of creating and modifying motion, and how to make the parts of tools and machines the right size so that they can resist the stresses they're going to be subjected to. Many failed designs have been the direct result of ignorance of basic mechanical principles.
Another requirement is a good knowledge of the art of drawing. For a drafter to be successful in their field, they must know more than how to make mechanical drawings. Nevertheless this is a major part of their work, because drawings that don't clearly represent the object drawn are bad news in the fabrication shop and will probably cause serious mistakes. Delays in the machine or wood shop are often caused by poor drawings that are lacking in things like dimensions, or the arrangement and number of the views, or in some other respect.
Therefore, a good education in this field is totally necessary for industry to produce the products we use today. Sure, CAD programs have made life easier producing more accurate drawings than ever before, but if we put a lack of knowledge in, the end result is a lack of knowledge coming out.
Tim Davis is the author of Mechanical Drafting 101 at http://draftingservice.us/m101/ which is a very complete course in mechanical drawing.
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