Architectural Drawing Standards And Conventions

Step 2: Drawing conventions

Well I have no doubt that having completed Step 2 you will now be very aware that there are many different types of drawings to become familiar with. But did you know that each type of drawing has been developed over time to meet the requirements of particular industries and projects? Many professions have a particular set of drawing standards and conventions that they always use. For example, professions such as engineering, architecture and plumbing all use drawing conventions. And, of course, so does the furniture making industry.

Conventions are a widely used practice or procedure. Standards are a set of rules for doing things. Because drawings contain a lot of information they can easily become cluttered and not easily understood by all working with them. One way to keep them tidy and consistent is to use standards and conventions. For example there are particular ways of formatting margins, using a title block and standardising lettering sizes which are used across the industry.

At Modern Edge we use drawing conventions that comply with Australian Standards for the furniture making industry. It won't take long for you to become familiar with the standards and conventions and most of these are meant to improve and blend your drawing skills anyway.

Discussion icon Discuss with your workmates or facilitator about where you can find the Australian Standards that relate to drawing for the furniture making industry. How and when should you use them? Why is it important to become familiar with them?

Two important conventions that go hand in hand are scaling and dimensioning. Very often you will find that the object to be drawn is either too big or too small to be drawn exactly to size on the drawing paper. We use a method of scaling the drawing so that the plans are an exact image of the object but dimensionally smaller - or larger!

Scale drawing

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• Scale drawings
• Dimensions

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Sometimes we need to scale down some larger parts in order to see the whole object on a single sheet and for detailed parts we may need to scale them up in size in order to see the finer details.

Dimensioning is the convention used for adding measurement notes, such as the length and breadth of the object, to a drawing. Dimensions include text, lines, extension lines and arrowheads.

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Measurements are not subject to scaling and should always be full size when positioning drawings on the page, irrespective of the scale being used for the drawing.

First 8 lines drawing Just as the written word is controlled by standard practices of spelling and grammar, there are rules and conventions for the use of lines in drawing. One of the most important line drawing conventions used is the First 8 Lines rule.

The First 8 lines rule is a technique of positioning all views of a drawing on a page before attempting to draw any part of it. This will place the drawing precisely and it will be spaced in such a way that you will have enough room for lettering, dimensioning and detail drawings if required.

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While some rules and conventions are different depending on the drawing, the First 8 Lines Rule must be observed on every drawing.

You can read about the types of lines that can be drawn and the conventions used when drawing them in the Techniques section of the resources. Using the First 8 Lines Rule activity in the resource section you can also practise drawing using this convention.

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What standards and conventions do you use? Do you have any drawing tips? Discuss these questions with your workmates or facilitator.

Another convention used for manual drawing is the use of title blocks and margins.

You need a title panel to identify the name of the person to whom the drawing belongs as well as the name of the drawing, the scale at which it is drawn, and the date that it was completed. Margins define the space where the drawings are to be done.

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•  Types of lines
•  Line work
•  Guide lines

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First 8 lines rule

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Title blocks and margins

In the resources section you can find out more about title blocks and margins. You can also practice using the conventions of presenting drawing using the Presentation requirements activity.

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Presentation requirements

Ok, now go to Step 3.