The high point of my academic career was 7th grade drafting. I got an A+ on every single assignment. From there to my Ph.D. was just one long slow slide into mediocrity.
I've always rather enjoyed drafting, although for several decades I did very little of it. Now I've returned to it in support of my hobbies and avocations ( typefounding, the documentation of typecasting equipment and "hot metal" composing machinery of various kinds, home-shop machining, and model engineering). I've found, however, that in the intervening years drafting and its tools have changed considerably. Back in the 7th grade when I did so well (in the early 1970s) it was all paper-based drafting and notions of Geometrical Dimensioning and Tolerancing just hadn't filtered down to the secondary school level. It is all very different now. Moreover, while I have some nice old mechanical drawing tools, my options for digital tools are severely constrained by issues of cost and availability.
Drafting has always been a field where professional standards are important. It has also now become a relatively complicated field; GD&T, for example, is not a simple subject. I find that in coming up to speed on it (or as up-to-speed as I'm ever going to get) I need to take notes. These drafting Notebooks are just that: my own personal notebooks. So please take note that:
(1) I have no professional qualifications at all in drafting, modeling, or for that matter any kind of engineering at all. (My Ph.D. is in English & American Literature.)
(2) Everything in these Notebooks may be wrong.
(3) To a great extent I try to adhere to formal drafting standards such as the ASME Y14 series. But I'm a hobbyist; I don't have to. In many cases I prefer older conventions - even 19th century conventions, which were often more beautiful. I may well adopt obsolete conventions and styles here, and I may not always point out when I'm doing this.
(4) Everything here is WITHOUT WARRANTY. With only a few small exceptions, these Notebooks are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license and in all cases are subject to the Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability of that license.
If you're involved with engineering, modeling, or drafting on a professional basis, you owe it to yourself, your employer, and your clients/customers to get real, professional training in these fields. Don't rely upon the speculations of an unqualified hobbyist such as me.
If you are a professional and you spot an error or problem in these Notebooks, and if you would care to take the time to point them out to me, I would be most grateful. E-mail to: dmm@Lemur.com
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2014 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Circuitous Root is a Registered Trademark of David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - ShareAlike" license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ for its terms.
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