Drafting Instructions & Tips: Key to a Successful Project

If you’re an architect or a construction engineer, you’ll know the importance of accurately drafting a plan or blueprint for your project. While you can only learn pro drafting after a period, you can practice a few rules and instructions. So, what are these drafting instructions? Can they help you? 

Yes, these instructions will help you manage your steps toward making a solid plan for your project. You’ll learn what points are more important than others, what wrong decisions you’ve taken while drafting plans, and many more. Alongside this, I’ll provide tips to help make your plans more efficient and error-free.

5-Step Guide to Architectural/Designer Drafting Instructions

Whether the plan will be made by an architect, indoor designer, or construction engineer, the basics of the approach are more or less the same. Following the steps below should be beneficial for preparing a thorough and practical draft.  

Choosing Your Tool

Many people get extra scrupulous in this part and spend a huge sum of money to get the fanciest software with a crazy number of features. While highly capable software with many features will help you, remember that it all comes down to the person’s skill.

It’s you who make the drawing, not the tools or the software. So, fancy software is never a necessity. You can work on an older and simpler version of AutoCAD or use manual tools like paper, pen, and pencils. It’s totally up to you, and with proper detailing and planning, you can ace the draft in the simplest 

Visualize and Co-ordinate

So, before starting with a project, you need to make a rough plan inside of your head. You’ll augment and alter that visualized plan as you progress with your work.  Visualization is necessary because it helps you remember the purpose of your plan. For instance, imagine you’re working on a floor plan. A floor plan mainly concerns the relationship between corresponding spaces and dimensions. It also highlights and correlates all the interior and exterior features of the proposed plan. So, a floor plan must have some specific qualities. You can’t burden it with unwarranted details. Visualizing and pre-planning can help you maintain that.

Maintain the Scale

A drafter or designer should always remember that you must transform this plan or draw it into a visual reality. The plan will be extremely problematic to implement if every part of it isn’t drawn to scale. It would help if you drew each element of your drawing according to the right proportion. In AutoCAD or other computer-based drawing tools, proper scaling is comparatively easier. 

If you’re working on paper, make sure your drawn lines are perpendicular to the paper’s edge. When you start drawing, lightly outline the max dimension of each graphic piece on your sheet. This will let you handle the smaller details well. 

Implementing Line Weight Feature

Layering is important whether you’re drawing on software or simply on paper. It’ll help you keep things distinct, malleable, and organized. In CAD, you can easily implement layers, but what about papers? Using different line weights for different objects and materials can solve your problem. You can also apply this technique in your CAD drawings to make them more accessible.  

You can apply this feature with more comfort if you can manage a system for yourself, like always using heavy-weight lines for walls, medium for other structures on the floor, and lightweight for doors, windows, and stairs. 

Focus on Detail

Whatever purpose your drawing may have, you must focus on particular details. This will improve your drawing’s effectiveness on different levels. For instance, a site plan must include all the necessary info about the construction site. You must mention property lines, in what condition the site is in, any irregularities that might affect the construction, height restrictions, and other details.

Using weighted lines, applying shading and coloring can highlight many details and features. They’ll also greatly enhance your drawing. In AutoCAD, hatching is a great feature to add detail and distinction to the element of your drawings. So, after finishing the basic draft of your plan, focus on the details. The more accurate and attractive your plan would be, the better. 

Tips to Improve Your Drafting

Learning to draft requires patience and a lot of practice. While mastering drafting might be challenging, utilizing the following tips will help you.

Embrace New Technologies A designer should prioritize his comfort zone, but they shouldn’t also blindly hate new emerging tools and technologies. Note that, many new open-source software offers innovative features that make it easier for designers to draft their plans. So, try to play with new tools and see which one suits your work-style the best. 

Don’t Overcrowd Your Drawing

Your draft needs to contain a lot of detail that’s true. But overcrowding the plan is never a good thing. A congested plan is hard to understand and, thus, harder to implement.

The only way to avoid putting too much unnecessary detail into your plan is by premeditating your actions. Assess your sites thoroughly and mark which features are indispensable. You can try to make a priority list out of them to decide more comfortably.  

Plan Your Layout Beforehand

To help you pre-plan your draft, I’d suggest drawing only a single line once you’ve planned the layout of all your sheets. You can only avoid drawing a messy plan if every step of your work is thoughtfully taken. Make a thorough list of every component and condition details you’ll need to include in your drawing beforehand. Once you can visualize the final product, only then should you start working your way through it. 

Keep Supporting Elements’ Size Manageable and Uniform

Supporting elements are necessary for a better comprehension of your plan. By supporting materials, I’m talking about annotations, text bubbles, notes, etc. Keeping them manageable will affect the overall clarity of your plan and make it more congested. Make sure to make them manageable, too, because that will make the plan easy to understand. 

Practice, Practice, and Practice

You won’t find perfect draft instructions anywhere that will magically improve your work overnight. It all comes down to practice. The more you work on your skill, the better your performance will eventually be. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Drafting Instructions

Here I have tried to answer some of the most asked questions related to drafting instructions across the internet. 

Is it better to draw your plan on a larger scale?

This is a tradeoff. The larger the scaling of your plan, the more details you have to include. While a detailed plan is always better, it can be challenging. Also, a heavily detailed plan is very difficult to alter later on. And room for flexibility in a draft or blueprint is often necessary. So, it would be smart to find the sweet spot and keep your plans both adequately detailed and easily manageable.

How important is artistic lettering in drafts?

Not that important if it’s not a trademark of yours. Many big and famous architects use artistic lettering and techniques to make their designs unique and exceptionally appealing.    But as a beginner, it shouldn’t concern you at all. Focus more on the clarity and readability of your letters rather than their panache. 

Do I need degrees for jobs as drafting architecture?

Yes, a minimum qualification certificate or diploma certificate might be necessary at least. But these are general cases, and it solely depends on the employer. So, if you’re just a beginner who is thinking of a career as an architect drafter, consider completing one or more respective courses first.  

How important is mathematics in this field?

For accurate designing and scaling you’ll have to be good with numbers. At least the basic concepts of geometry and arithmetic are a must. Practicing advance concepts like trigonometry would also come in handy. 

Conclusion

Mastering the art of perfect drafting and designing indeed needs a lot of practice. But practicing the wrong methods will worsen your work rather than improve them. So, you must follow the right drafting instructions and practices. 

This article will help you get better at drafting and designing and provide all the necessary information. Also try to the follow the tips and include the practices I mentioned in your daily work. You’ll notice improvement I promise.