Blueprints - General Concepts

Any construction or production - from an ordinary teapot to a supersonic aircraft - cannot be imagined without the creation and use of production documentation. Sometimes the weight of the production documentation for a product is several times greater than the weight of the product itself.

Everything or practically everything that a person creates and what surrounds us - houses, technical devices, clothes - is created according to pre-made drawings.

The production drawing, which originated in ancient times, has undergone a huge number of changes and quality improvements over many centuries of its existence. From half-sketches, which conveyed the shapes and sizes of an object very approximately, the drawing has evolved and today is capable of conveying with one hundred percent accuracy the geometry and dimensions of the object depicted on it. Of particular importance in the development of the drawing was played by the scale, which made it possible to dramatically increase the accuracy of the objects depicted.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the tools of labor of the designer were a drawing board, a compass and a slide rule. However, today it is impossible to imagine the design process without using a computer. To work with electronic drawings and mathematical models of products, engineers in the modern world use computer-aided design (CAD) systems, these programs implement design, in which design solutions are obtained through the interaction of a person and a computer. The main task of CAD systems is to speed up the product development process, these systems allow to a large extent to protect the design-engineer from the same type of tedious work, which in turn increases his intellectual capabilities and productivity. More complex elements are made from simple elements, sketches are converted into 3D models and vice versa, 3D models are quickly and easily laid out on drawings, accompanying documentation and specification are built automatically.