Excerpt from Mechanical Drawing: Lettering, Materials and Methods Broadly speaking, Mechanical Drawing may be understood to mean drawing done with the aid of instruments. More strictly, it may mean the drawing of machines or things mechanical as distinguished from architectural drawing, for instance. Mechanical drawings of machines are often called working drawings, of buildings they are called plans. Such drawings convey the ideas of the originator or engineer to the mechanic or the workman. Mechanical drawing, then, may be said to be the language of the engineer, the architect, the mechanic. The musician conveys his ideas by means of music, the artist by means of his picture. An inventor or designer often spends weeks and months on some contrivance or plan. He probably makes many calculations. It would be almost impossible for him to remember all the details and scores of dimensions, much less to tell them to some one else. The drawing then furnishes him with a means of recording his ideas and calculations and showing details of construction. The requirements of a good draftsman are neatness, accuracy and rapidity. By neatness is meant that not only must the draftsman keep his drawing clean, but he must arrange it neatly. The student must cultivate the habit of making clean, sharp lines and neat, well-arranged drawings. Unless a drawing is made in a workmanlike manner, the work on the contrivance is not apt to be performed in a thorough manner. Accuracy, too, is most important. It is evident that unless a drawing is made accurate in detail and dimensioned accurately, work made from it will not be as planned. It will often be found impossible to make the thing at all or costly mistakes will result. Much valuable time, labor, and material will be wasted because of a careless draftsman and checker. A draftsman should not only be neat and absolutely accurate, but he must be able to make a drawing in a reasonable length of time. No matter how good a draftsman may be, an employer can hardly afford to keep him unless he has a certain degree of rapidity. However, accuracy and neatness should not be sacrificed for rapidity. Rapidity greatly depends on how one takes hold of a piece of work, his order of procedure. A regular order should be acquired. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.