subject: Quality Of Structural Drafting Process And Structural Drafting Standards [print this page] The structural drafting and drawing domain has undergone dramatic changes over the past decade with the advent of Computer Aided Design (CAD) technologies. With the need of faster construction outputs and ever changing building codes and liabilities it is important to have a definite in-house quality check program for structural drafting. Such a program helps you deliver efficient designs, accurate contract documents, less RFIs and save time and money.
Basic Structural drafting standards contain three elements - formal drafting procedures, drafting guides and checklists. Medium and large construction agencies adopt written formal drafting procedures and standards in order to deliver high-quality drawings on consistent basis and to reduce the risk of human errors. The purpose of common structural drafting procedures is to keep every project member on a single platform and ensure uniformity of design.
Drafting guides are essential to present drafting procedures along with local building codes, theoretical concepts, best practices, practical applications and value engineering.
Checklists prepared at the end of project job helps engineers to remember/recall the hundreds of things that go into drafting and documentation of drawings.
Formerly, Structural drafting was treated as a niche skill. Today most structural drafters are CAD operators who may be expert in using CAD systems but lack knowledge and skills to prepare effective framing plans, draw joint symbols or detail structure dimensions. To avoid such situations local authorities have come up with definite drafting standards which incorporate basic drafting processes and a library of technical information, drawings and blocks.
Drafting process contains rules for preparing framing plans, drawing elevation, sections and details, define beam-column connections, etc. The block library is repository of standard "Blocks" (pre-drawn objects such as joists, angles, bolts, shapes, weld symbols, etc). This results in improved productivity and drawing uniformity across the project.
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