Your first drawing
Why a model is not enough, and how to lay out views that answer a fabricator's questions.
By the end you can
- Create a drawing from a part and place the views a fabricator needs
- Explain why a 3D model alone is not a manufacturing instruction
- Choose a scale and sheet size that stay readable when printed
On this page · 3 sections
You have a perfect model. The person cutting the part has a bandsaw, a drill press, and a printout. The drawing is what connects those two facts.
Why not just send the model?
Sometimes you can — a 3D printer or a CNC router takes the geometry directly. But a drawing still earns its place:
- It states what matters. A model says every dimension equally loudly. A drawing says this bore is critical and that outer edge can be off by a millimetre.
- It works without a computer. Taped to the wall by the drill press is where most FTC manufacturing actually happens.
- It is checkable. Someone can verify a part against a drawing. Verifying against a model means opening CAD and measuring.
Judges read drawings
A complete drawing set is one of the clearest signals a team has an engineering process. It is concrete evidence in a way that a screenshot of a render is not.
The views to place
Start with the front view — for a flat plate, the face you would lay on the table. Onshape projects the others from it.
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Place the front view showing the largest, most informative face.
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Project one or two more only if they add something. A 3 mm plate does not need three orthographic views to explain its thickness.
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Add an isometric in a corner. It costs nothing and stops the fabricator building a mirror image.
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Add a detail view for anything too small to dimension clearly at the main scale.
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Pick a scale that prints readably on the paper your team actually has. A drawing readable only at 200% zoom has failed at its one job.
One part per sheet, at least at first
Combining six parts onto a sheet saves paper and costs clarity. Until your team has a drawing convention everyone knows, one part per sheet removes a whole category of mistake.
Next
Views are placed. Dimensions are what make them manufacturable.
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