Technical Who does their own chassis blue prints?

We never had to do that. But many engineering courses I took required manual drafting or CAD in later years. I went through many iterations of AutoCad.

In my early manual drawing courses, we were graded on our lettering, also weights of drawn lines, between the design and dimensioning. To my last days of CAD at work, I still did this. A bit of work but I felt it was worth it.

An old timer told me, if you put out a poor drawing, the machinist will tend not to regard it in the same manner as he would in an excellent drawing. So if anything, my drawings always looked good.

I took a tool design course around 1993. Everything was manually drawn, our CAD lab at the time was riddled with problems. My final-exam drawing was a masterpiece. BUT... the instructor LOST it on me. I did have an older version that I was able to come up with.

 

“This is what engineering notebooks used to look like. The old timers I knew all carried one with them, chock full of little conceptual sketches. Even the lettering was neat and uniform.”

When I was working I used to always carry around a hard cover, green fabric bound ledger book. I would take notes in it, draw sketches in it and date everything. It kept everything in one place that I was working on. When it was full it had a start date, finish date and I would store them away for future reference. I started using them because the company I worked for always had them on hand.

 

How about this ?

Mike

 

We had those black marbled cover composition books that most of us used. One guy was always losing his, we found them all over the place. I had a few I saved and bookmarked some of the content if it was important to go back to.

 

Come again? I mean the HAMB talent level is insane. The thing that impresses me the most is the learned knowledge that would allow one to know what to design/draw: angles, heights, widths, radii, etc.
What a great thread!

 

I was one of those guys in a room full of 50-100 other draftsman. Started out at 16 as a detailer, then layout and finally designer in the later years. Two 10 ft drafting boards end-to-end. 30 ft drawings. All the drawings for a complete line weighed hundreds of pounds. I wasn't involved in product. All tooling. Mostly checking fixtures.

Neatness was absolutely required. Way more than drafting class in high school. Various line weights had a purpose. You couldn't have smudged up drawings. You learned not to lean on your drawing too much. We'd throw down cornmeal to minimize smudging. If you didn't have a beautiful and perfectly legible printing style, you didn't have a job. Draftsman are the best printers in the world. And the best rubber band shooters. LOL

Drawing medium was linen impregnated with starch early on then vellum type paper and finally, mylar.
Our erasers were basically drill motors. If you had a lot of changes to make, or you screwed up and drew a bunch of stuff out of position, you'd have a lot of work to do and end up with a big pile of eraser shavings. Avoided that as much as possible. LOL
Of all the benefits of computer aided design, that is the most beneficial... the relative ease of making changes.
Cuz there are always changes.

So...
Obviously, I am design indoctrinated. Yet, I understand when a guy says he just starts cutting and welding. You have to have fairly extensive build experience to do that, though. Fact is, my experience building projects helped with my design work. And vice versa, my design experience has helped me with my projects.

Drawings always help.
If you're able to do them.

 

Haven't done a full chassis car for quite some time now, when I did, I'd typically do a sketch/drawing. Still have my chassis table hiding in the trees out behind my shop, Mrs. 99 expresses concern about it once in a while. I just remind her it's not hurting anything. My drawings typically scaled it 1" = 1', easier to get my simple mind wrapped around. Stuff like these ladder bars or a roll cage I'll lay out full scale on my work table and jig up for it. Have a nice Thanksgiving all.

 

So I'm not crazy! It was linen! And it made a nice handkerchief once the starch was washed out. That was the part I couldn't remember. But the rest of your post is exactly what I remember was what the instructor said was a good job then.

 

We had drawers full of EA6B system drawings in our files. Even through 1998 I would get calls from Grumman with wiring questions. These drawings had to be put together to make up a full harness, we had copious wire lists too, pages and pages. We moved to another facility in 2004-2005. I had one of the fat cats make the choice on what we had to chuck out. These drawings went into the hopper. Some dated back to 1963.

 

Nice job on those bars Johnny !

 

Thanks Marty! You have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

 

I just bought a car. A drag race qualified (suspension), street legal car.
I asked about frame (not chassis) drawing(s) so that I'd have a better idea what the build was.
The seller told me that in one of the many boxes of parts that he provided, there are many pictures of the build.
While there is no dimensions, there are photos of the entire cars build, including the frame, then the final chassis (with suspension !), and then the body as put into place over the chassis.

This was very helpful in understanding the car as a whole unit.
Sorry...no pictures until I change the wheels !!! Rules you know.

Mike

 

I don't know how I missed this thread , but it has been very interesting to me . I use a little of all the examples shown. I really enjoyed drafting in junior high and ever since I have used at least graph paper to put down some ideas.
Alot of times I will do just a quick sketch to have something to look at for a project.
Since building our dragster I'm big on making cardboard templates when fabricating any part , it saves alot of time and metal ! I like to mock up parts to get a visual idea too.

 

I took 'Mechanical Drawing' in High School. What the teachers never could get through to me was the organization and neatness. Too much German stubbornness in my ancestry. I wish I had been a better student.
My punishment was that I became a teacher myself. (Auto and Metals)

Personal computers have helped me to draw stuff but I have been through too many transitions and can't keep up. I'd like a simple Windows program to draw in two dimensions and save to DFX files. I don't get Solid Works at all.

My latest is LibreCad, but I find it cumbersome. I really liked my DOS based Generic Cad but I'm afraid that that ship has sailed too.
Any ideas on a simple, affordable program?

Or,
Back to the drawing board!

 

I keep a folder of drawings, sketches, ideas. When I look at the dates, it takes you back how long I owned the car.

 

I know a guy with a machine shop that swears by a program called Bob Cad.
https://bobcad.com/

I found it to be clumsy compared to AutoCad. I'm considering a bootleg version of AutoCad, but they protect it like a hawk. I would not have it on a PC that is connected to the internet.

There are less expensive versions of it, student copies too. This is the only thing that I would recommend. There are schools that teach the basics at night, like BOCES and educational extension programs.

 

I have this folder

All way too clumsy to learn and use. If I spend 10 minutes trying to draw the first line, I move on. My AutoCAD97LT is 32 bit and uses a 16bit installer. That, and an old MacCAD I had, have the same interface and tools. Great stuff. It is still far easier than what I have found. I have to keep legacy machines around for my vintage software. I have one still loaded with PhotoShop CS and Illustrator. It's slow compared to today, even so you can get a bunch of stuff done. I' d love to find a simple free/cheap 2D CAD to make DXF's to generate G code from for my current laptop. Still looking. Mike

 

Making full size pieces out of cardboard works excellent for me I love it Cardboard Assisted Drafting/Cardboard Assisted Manufacturing I did a lot of drafting back in the day but never got used to or cared for CAD When I was drafting on on a board or sketching on graph paper I was more in tune with the project somehow, almost Zen like if that makes sense. I am very impressed with what I see on this thread!!!!

 

I have mentioned this before.

We had a bootleg copy of AutoCad lite for Windows 3.1 at work on a standalone PC, a 386 that we used to run other old programs. It would not do 3D which was okay for most of our school work. I could export a DXF file and for some reason it was compatible with our Applicon CAD program.

That program crashed and IT refused to re-load it since it was unsupported, so AutoCad it was. I had to teach it again to myself, the AC Lite was only a few iterations from the old AC with the blue screens. That used a lot of line commands, they carried over to newer AC versions. Use the up and down arrow keys to get a previously used command line back. All I had to do is type in a few letters to do most anything. The 3.1 Lite was the first I saw that used icons.

 

I'm too impatient to draw up an entire build, components or subsystems maybe but for me it's faster and more satisfying to build the real thing.
I'd like to think I can catch more issues that way, so much can be missed in 2D or even 3D modeling.

 

I worked mainly in 2D and found I had to do a bunch of extra views as a sanity check along the way. Some I never included into the finished design/drawing. With tooling, I would draw the part or assembly into the tool itself, tradition was to do it in red. That was not part of the formal drawing.

 

here is my CAD program

 

Oh yes... our company threw a lot of these into the dumpster around 1996 and only kept maybe a 1/2 dozen. A couple ones in the hopper had machined up ash tray mounts on them, up to around 1987 smoking was still permitted.

 

Some people don't understand that CAD doesn't draw anything for you. If you couldn't draw something on paper, you probably can't draw it in CAD either. I am far more trained and adept at pen and ink drafting than CAD. 8 years of drafting between Jr High, High School and college. Then about a year of Agricultural Engineering and 3 of Cartography. I did the Cartography because they were still drawing. ESRI's Arc GIS killed that about the time I would have entered the field. I got the dark room, enlarger, air brushes and a bunch of drafting equipment when the University switched over to GIS. I was selling industrial equipment when the boss gave me AutoCAD to learn ('97). I don't suck, but I am self taught and probably could move faster if I knew all of the tricks. Kind of like welding, the mill or the lathe. I know just enough to get results. I still have it and use CAD because it is a tool. Mike

 

Knowing the older (blue screen, no icons) AutoCad helped me with the newer versions. I'm 99.99% self taught as well. The old versions, you had to set up your work space, it was a chore just to get going. But it was all command-line driven. That carries over to any newer versions.

After 2006 when I HAD to learn it... I made a few start-up drawings set up the way I liked. I made up a series of A through F sized templates.

In college, it was pretty good to know AutoCad. I have a V12 manual here, I just looked at it... not easy to follow for sure. With the new stuff, I never used a manual at all. There is sufficient help online if I ever got stuck. Some I printed and saved in a binder.

 

This is my HAMB friendly design center, it's 4'X8', and I found the eraser, now if I just had some chalk. Seriously, I am going to put it to work soon !

 

When you get around to it.
No excuses now because you have a round tuit!

 

I got a couple of those. Didn't help...

 

It was 1965, Bobby Allison was building that little '64 Chevelle in his shop. He asked NASCAR if he could use a Holman-Moody front clip on it, NASCAR said no. He winds up building his own on the shop floor, literally designed in chalk on the concrete floor.

 

We actually had a garbage-picked black board when we did the stock car thing. One of the rolling type, but big and handy. With 2 sides, both cars were covered for things to do.