Architectural Drawing

An architectural drawing or architect's drawing is a technical drawing of a building (or building project) that falls within the definition of architecture. Architectural drawings are used by architects and others for a number of purposes: to develop a design idea into a coherent proposal, to communicate ideas and concepts, to convince clients of the merits of a design, to enable a building contractor to construct it, as a record of the completed work, and to make a record of a building that already exists. Architectural drawings are drawn according to a set of conventions, which include particular views (floor plan, section etc.), sheet sizes, units of measurement and scales, annotation and cross referencing. Conventionally, drawings were made in ink on paper or a similar material, and any copies required had to be laboriously made by hand. The twentieth century saw a shift to drawing on tracing paper, so that mechanical copies could be run off efficiently. The development of the computer had a major impact on the methods used to design and create technical drawings,[1] making manual draughting almost obsolete, and opening up new possibilities of form using organic shapes and complex geometry. Today the vast majority of drawings are created using CADsoftware Standard Views Used in Architectural Drawing Floor plan A floor plan is the most fundamental architectural diagram, a view from above showing the arrangement of spaces in building in the same way as a map, but showing the arrangement at a particular level of a building. Technically it is a horizontal section cut through a building (conventionally at three feet / one meter above floor level), showing walls, windows and door openings and other features at that level. The plan view includes anything that could be seen below that level: the floor, stairs (but only up to the plan level), fittings and sometimes furniture. Objects above the plan level (e.g. beams overhead) can be indicated as dotted lines. Site plan

A site plan is a specific type of plan, showing the whole context of a building or group of buildings. A site plan shows property boundaries and means of access to the site, and nearby structures if they are relevant to the design. For a development on an urban site, the site plan may need to show adjoining streets to demonstrate how the design fits in to the urban fabric. Within the site boundary, the site plan gives an

overview of the entire scope of work. It shows the buildings (if any) already existing and those that are proposed, usually as a building footprint; roads, parking lots, footpaths, hard landscaping, trees and planting. For a construction project, the site plan also needs to show all the services connections: drainage and sewer lines, water supply, electrical and communications cables, exterior lighting etc Elevation

An elevation is a view of a building seen from one side, a flat representation of one faade. This is the most common view used to describe the external appearance of a building. Each elevation is labeled in relation to the compass direction it faces, e.g. the north elevation of a building is the side that most closely faces north. [8] Buildings are rarely a simple rectangular shape in plan, so a typical elevation may show all the parts of the building that are seen from a particular direction. Cross section

A cross section, also simply called a section, represents a vertical plane cut through the object, in the same way as a floor plan is a horizontal section viewed from the top. In the section view, everything cut by the section plane is shown as a bold line, often with a solid fill to show objects that are cut through, and anything seen beyond generally shown in a thinner line. Sections are used to describe the relationship between different levels of a building. In the Observatories drawing illustrated here, the section shows the dome seen from the outside, a second dome that can only be seen inside the building, and the way the space between the two accommodates a large astronomical telescope: relationships that would be difficult to understand from plans alone. Architectural Perspective Perspective in drawing is an approximate representation on a flat surface of an image as it is perceived by the eye. The key concepts here are:

Perspective is the view from a particular fixed viewpoint. Horizontals and verticals in the drawing represent horizontal and vertical edges in the object. Lines leading away into the distance appear to converge at a vanishing point. All horizontals converge to a point on the horizon, which is a horizontal line at eye level. Verticals converge to a point either above or below the horizon.

The basic categorization of artificial perspective is by the number of vanishing points:

One-point perspective where objects facing the viewer are orthogonal, and receding lines converge to a single vanishing point. Two-point perspective reduces distortion by viewing objects at an angle, with all the horizontal lines receding to one of two vanishing points, both located on the horizon.

Three-point perspective introduces additional realism by making the verticals recede to a third vanishing point, which is above or below depending upon whether the view is seen from above or below.

Types of Architectural Drawing Presentation drawings

Drawings intended to explain a scheme and to promote its merits. Working drawings may include tones or hatches to emphasize different materials, but they are diagrams, not intended to appear realistic. Basic presentation drawings typically include people, vehicles and trees, taken from a library of such images, and are otherwise very similar in style to working drawings. Rendering is the art of adding surface textures and shadows to show the visual qualities of a building more realistically. An architectural illustrator or graphic designer may be employed to prepare specialist presentation images, usually perspectives or highly finished site plans, floor plans and elevations etc. Survey drawings

Measured drawings of existing land, structures and buildings. Architects need an accurate set of survey drawings as a basis for their working drawings, to establish exact dimensions for the construction work. Surveys are usually measured and drawn up by specialist land. Record drawings

Historically, architects have made record drawings in order to understand and emulate the great architecture known to them. In the Renaissance, architects from all over Europe studied and recorded the remains of the Roman and Greek civilizations, and used these influences to develop the architecture of the period. Records are made both individually, for local purposes, and on a large scale for publication.