Mechanical engineering sheet set examples?

[morkus64]

Hi all -

I'm trying to put together a set of drawings for a little mechanical project and have a bunch of the individual drawings done in CAD, but I haven't yet placed the drawings on sheets because I'm not sure of the conventions used in mechanical engineering. For instance, how many parts per sheet is appropriate, etc. Does anyone happen to have a final sheet set that I can look at to learn by example?

 

[Bignate603]

For something you're giving to someone to make the parts you really don't want to do more than one part per sheet. For all but the simplest parts its very common to have multiple sheets per part.

The one case where you will have multiple parts per sheet is when you're showing how the parts assembled.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Sheet 1: Parts assembled with bill of materials. Page 1 of X. Drawing #1.
Sheet 2: Part a with dimensions. Page 2 of X
Sheet 3: Part b with dimensions. Page 3 of X
. . .
and so on.

 

[Jeff7]

I don't know if it's quite what you're looking for, but this is what they had for us at Penn State. (PDF)


I guess my own take on it is: Does it look good?
Does it look cluttered and crowded? If multiple parts are going on one page, do the parts have some meaningful association with one another? For example, if you're drawing up a car, it would make no sense to have the dome light's plastic cap on the same page as a drawing of a seat belt buckle.

If it's an assembly, and you're showing how things go together, put multiple parts on one page in a way that helps show how they fit together.

If you're doing a drawing of a single component, and showing dimensions on it using the 3 classic orthographic views, then I'd keep one part per page.
However, sometimes it might be helpful to show a separate view on the page of some detail of how the one part fits inside another, to help communicate design intent.

 

[Farmer]

Let's see, think about what drawings you would need if you needed to fabricate the thing, and then put those drawings together.

Most solid modelling programs have a 2D sheet mode, so that should save some time.

 

[morkus64]

Thanks guys - this is useful. I studied architecture, so I wasn't quite sure. Some of these parts seem simple enough to me (and small, at least compared to wall assemblies), but I suppose that doesn't mean they might be more difficult to fabricate.

 

[Jeff7]

Thanks guys - this is useful. I studied architecture, so I wasn't quite sure. Some of these parts seem simple enough to me (and small, at least compared to wall assemblies), but I suppose that doesn't mean they might be more difficult to fabricate.

With a drawing set, the goal of it is that you should be able to hand it to someone else, and they will be able to fabricate exactly what it is you want, based only on what's on the drawing.