Engineering drawing in the context of Parting line

A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something – its design. The verb to design expresses the process of developing a design. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan may also be considered to be a design, such as in arts and crafts. A design is expected to have a purpose within a specific context, typically aiming to satisfy certain goals and constraints while taking into account aesthetic, functional and experiential considerations. Traditional examples of designs are architectural and engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, sewing patterns, and less tangible artefacts such as business process models.

Graphics (from Ancient Greek γραφικός (التصميم) 'pertaining to drawing, painting, writing, etc.') are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, in typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and recreational software. Images that are generated by a computer are called computer graphics.

Examples are photographs, drawings, line art, mathematical graphs, line graphs, charts, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics often combine text, illustration, and color. Graphic design may consist of the deliberate selection, creation, or arrangement of typography alone, as in a brochure, flyer, poster, web site, or book without any other element. The objective can be clarity or effective communication, association with other cultural elements, or merely the creation of a distinctive style.

A technical pen is a specialized instrument used by an engineer, architect, or drafter to make lines of constant width for architectural, engineering, or technical drawings. Technical pens may use either a refillable ink reservoir or a replaceable ink cartridge.

Metal fabrication is the creation of metal structures by cutting, bending and assembling processes. It is a value-added process involving the creation of machines, parts, and structures from various raw materials.

Typically, a fabrication shop bids on a job, usually based on engineering drawings, and if awarded the contract, builds the product. Large fab shops employ a multitude of value-added processes, including welding, cutting, forming and machining.

A site plan or a plot plan is a type of drawing used by architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and engineers which shows existing and proposed conditions for a given area, typically a parcel of land which is to be modified. Site plans typically show buildings, roads, sidewalks and paths/trails, parking, drainage facilities, sanitary sewer lines, water lines, lighting, and landscaping and garden elements.

Such a plan of a site is a "graphic representation of the arrangement of buildings, parking, drives, landscaping and any other structure that is part of a development project".

Engineering drawing abbreviations and symbols are used to communicate and detail the characteristics of an engineering drawing. This list includes abbreviations common to the vocabulary of people who work with engineering drawings in the manufacture and inspection of parts and assemblies.

Technical standards exist to provide glossaries of abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols that may be found on engineering drawings. Many corporations have such standards, which define some terms and symbols specific to them; on the national and international level, ASME standard Y14.38 and ISO 128 are two of the standards. The ISO standard is also approved without modifications as European Standard EN ISO 123, which in turn is valid in many national standards.Australia utilises the Technical Drawing standards AS1100.101 (General Principals), AS1100-201 (Mechanical Engineering Drawing) and AS1100-301 (Structural Engineering Drawing).

A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The traditional white-on-blue appearance of blueprints is a result of the cyanotype process, which allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number of copies of an original reference. It was widely used for over a century for the reproduction of specification drawings used in construction and industry. Blueprints were characterized by white lines on a blue background, a negative of the original. Color or shades of grey could not be reproduced.

The process is obsolete, initially superseded by the diazo-based whiteprint process, and later by large-format xerographic photocopiers. It has since almost entirely been superseded by digital computer-aided construction drawings.

Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) is a system for defining and communicating engineering tolerances via a symbolic language on engineering drawings and computer-generated 3D models that describes a physical object's nominal geometry and the permissible variation thereof. GD&T is used to define the nominal (theoretically perfect) geometry of parts and assemblies, the allowable variation in size, form, orientation, and location of individual features, and how features may vary in relation to one another such that a component is considered satisfactory for its intended use. Dimensional specifications define the nominal, as-modeled or as-intended geometry, while tolerance specifications define the allowable physical variation of individual features of a part or assembly.

There are several standards available worldwide that describe the symbols and define the rules used in GD&T. One such standard is American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Y14.5. This article is based on that standard. Other standards, such as those from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) describe a different system which has some nuanced differences in its interpretation and rules (see GPS&V). The Y14.5 standard provides a fairly complete set of rules for GD&T in one document. The ISO standards, in comparison, typically only address a single topic at a time. There are separate standards that provide the details for each of the major symbols and topics below (e.g. position, flatness, profile, etc.). BS 8888 provides a self-contained document taking into account a lot of GPS&V standards.

An aperture card is a type of punched card with a cut-out window into which a chip of microfilm is mounted. Such a card is used for archiving or for making multiple inexpensive copies of a document for ease of distribution. The card is typically punched with machine-readable metadata associated with the microfilm image, and printed across the top of the card for visual identification; it may also be punched by hand in the form of an edge-notched card. The microfilm chip is most commonly 35mm in height, and contains an optically reduced image, usually of some type of reference document, such as an engineering drawing, that is the focus of the archiving process. Machinery exists to automatically store, retrieve, sort, duplicate, create, and digitize cards with a high level of automation.

Aperture cards have several advantages and disadvantages when compared to digital systems. While many aperture cards still play an important role in archiving, their role is gradually being replaced by digital systems.

A linear scale, also called a bar scale, scale bar, graphic scale, or graphical scale, is a means of visually showing the scale of a map, nautical chart, engineering drawing, or architectural drawing. A scale bar is common element of map layouts.

On large scale maps and charts, those covering a small area, and engineering and architectural drawings, the linear scale can be very simple, a line marked at intervals to show the distance on the earth or object which the distance on the scale represents. A person using the map can use a pair of dividers (or, less precisely, two fingers) to measure a distance by comparing it to the linear scale. The length of the line on the linear scale is equal to the distance represented on the earth multiplied by the map or chart's scale.

Whiteprint describes a document reproduction produced by using the diazo chemical process. It is also known as the blue-line process since the result is blue lines on a white background. It is a contact printing process that accurately reproduces a translucent original in size, but can reproduce only limited tonal range and no color.

The light sensitivity of the chemicals used was known in the 1890s and several related printing processes were patented at that time. Whiteprinting replaced the blueprint process for reproducing architectural and engineering drawings around the turn of the 20th century because the process was simpler and involved fewer toxic chemicals. A blue-line print is not permanent and will fade if exposed to light for weeks or months, but a print that lasts only a few months was sufficient as a working drawing for many purposes, and the original vellum drawings could be stored and reprinted as needed. Whiteprinting became obsolete around the turn of the 21st Century as technical drawing was replaced by computer-aided design and thus digital pen plotters or large-format printers (still sometimes colloquially called "blueprint printers") became favored.