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Overview
Structural drafting is the craft of turning an Engineer's structural design calculations and design sketches into presentational plan, section and detail drawings. More simply put, a Structural Drafter creates (i.e. draws) structural drawings.
Structural drafting is the craft of turning an Engineer's structural design calculations and design sketches into presentational plan, section and detail drawings. More simply put, a Structural Drafter creates (i.e. draws) structural drawings.
Structural drawings are the bridge between an Engineer's design and a Contractor who will build the design. A typical structural project would have three main players in it. Those would be the Owner, Designer (i.e. Architect or Engineer) and Contractor. An Owner would get a structure designed by hiring a Designer. Then once the design was complete the Owner would get the structure constructed by hiring a Contractor to build what the Designer designed.
In this article I'll briefly explain some of the fundamentals of structural drafting.
Herein I will not discuss shop drawings of any sorts, including steel detailing or rebar detailing.
The Effort
Anything more complex than a tree fort will need some type of drawing to depict what will be built. Complex structures are first designed in accordance to local building codes, and then the design calculations and design sketches are drawn up in presentational format.
Going from the design to the presentational drawings can happen in a number of different ways. For instance, the Structural Engineer who performed design calculations for a structure could do all the structural drafting work himself. Conversely, all of the drafting work could be done by a structural drafting CAD Technician.
The Knack
There is definitely a knack to structural drafting, as there is with any other discipline of drafting. This is why structural drafting was referred to earlier on in this article as a craft. A craft is the skilled practicing of an occupation.
Structural drawings have a certain look and feel to them, which is called line work. Line work could include a drawing's dimension styles, font styles, leader styles, scale of details, title block style and symbols, including: column bubbles, detail markers, elevation markers, section markers and structural shapes.
To become competent in creating well formatted structural drawings one would need hands-on experience, or a good training course, or perhaps sample drawings to study and mimic. Perhaps the best way to learn structural drafting is on-the-job training, either as an entry level CAD Technician, or as a Junior Engineer.
In Closing
There are many different niches of structural drafting that this article hasn't explored. Hopefully this article has set the stage for you to drill down further into this topic, if you chose to do so.
In this article I'll briefly explain some of the fundamentals of structural drafting.
Herein I will not discuss shop drawings of any sorts, including steel detailing or rebar detailing.
The Effort
Anything more complex than a tree fort will need some type of drawing to depict what will be built. Complex structures are first designed in accordance to local building codes, and then the design calculations and design sketches are drawn up in presentational format.
Going from the design to the presentational drawings can happen in a number of different ways. For instance, the Structural Engineer who performed design calculations for a structure could do all the structural drafting work himself. Conversely, all of the drafting work could be done by a structural drafting CAD Technician.
The Knack
There is definitely a knack to structural drafting, as there is with any other discipline of drafting. This is why structural drafting was referred to earlier on in this article as a craft. A craft is the skilled practicing of an occupation.
Structural drawings have a certain look and feel to them, which is called line work. Line work could include a drawing's dimension styles, font styles, leader styles, scale of details, title block style and symbols, including: column bubbles, detail markers, elevation markers, section markers and structural shapes.
To become competent in creating well formatted structural drawings one would need hands-on experience, or a good training course, or perhaps sample drawings to study and mimic. Perhaps the best way to learn structural drafting is on-the-job training, either as an entry level CAD Technician, or as a Junior Engineer.
In Closing
There are many different niches of structural drafting that this article hasn't explored. Hopefully this article has set the stage for you to drill down further into this topic, if you chose to do so.
