Drafting is a "language" that precisely communicates information such as shape and size. The goal is a finished product that matches the design.
Introduction to Drafting
Look around you. Everything you see that is made by humans – buildings, furniture, the light switch on the wall, your computer, the cola can on your desk, the car on the road, and the road itself – and many things you can’t see – the memory chip inside your computer, the plumbing and wiring in the walls of your building, the machinery of the HVAC system – have one thing in common: they all started out as drawings.
An old adage says, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Nowhere is this truer than in manufacturing and construction. Product designers use mechanical drawings to communicate the details of their designs.
Architectural drafters convey exact specifications to builders using detailed drawings called blueprints. Transportation drafters use technical drawings to show the location and design of new roads.
Across cultures and language barriers, a detailed drawing communicates a designer's exact specifications to the skilled craftsmen who will build the product.
How Drafters Make their Drawings
For many years, drafters sat at drawing boards and used drafting tools such as pencils, pens, compasses, protractors, triangles, and T squares to prepare drawings. Most drafters now use Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) programs to produce their drawings. CAD speeds up the drawing process and permits drafters to change drawings quickly and easily. However, CAD is only a tool; people who produce technical drawings with CAD still need the knowledge of traditional drafters.
A draftsman at work.
Types of Drafting
Drafting work has many specialties. Here are some of them.
Aeronautical drafters prepare engineering drawings, detailing plans and specifications used in the manufacture of aircraft, missiles, and related parts.
Architectural drafters draw architectural and structural features of buildings and other structures. These workers may specialize in a type of structure, such as residential or commercial, or in a kind of material used, such as reinforced concrete, masonry, steel, or timber.
Civil drafters prepare drawings and topographical and relief maps used in major construction or civil engineering projects such as highways, bridges, pipelines, flood control projects, and water and sewage systems.
Electrical drafters prepare wiring and layout diagrams used by workers who erect, install, and repair electrical equipment and wiring in communication centers, power plants, electrical distribution systems, and buildings.
Electronics drafters draw wiring diagrams, circuit board assembly diagrams, schematics, and layout drawings used in the manufacture, installation, and repair of electronic devices and components.
Mechanical drafters prepare drawings showing the detail and assembly of a wide variety of machinery and mechanical devices, indicating dimensions, fastening methods, and other requirements.
Process piping or pipeline drafters prepare drawings used in the layout, construction, and operation of oil and gas fields, refineries, chemical plants, and process piping systems.
One word - amazing!
That's it. That sums up the entire conference, amazing!
No, really though, I have been with the company for a year now and I attend mostly Pitsco conventions, which are great and we meet a lot of great teachers, which I love to do. This is the first show that I was able to meet a lot of really great students and wow, was I impressed.
I am on the Tech Prep technical committee for Skills and helped with that event on Thursday, which was, well, amazing! We had 78 student teams from all over the United States - the best of the best. The judges had a very tough job. Some of the projects the teams had come up with were top quality, and then how they integrated their projects to benefit their community or school (a requirement of Tech Prep) was remarkable.
Preparing for Tech Prep on Tuesday, I was able to venture out of the booth to check out the rest of the convention and watch the preparation begin for all of the competitions that were to ensue. In Bartle Hall, the entire hall was filled with every competition you could imagine. From plumbing, airplane engine repair, body work on auto fenders, robotics, house construction, cooking, CPR, hair dressing... it seemed like every skill was represented.
My most memorable experience from the conference came from within the Hearlihy/Pitsco booth. We had the Apprentice Screen Printing package in the booth, printing T-shirts. A group of three students came up to Kevin Bolte, who is a sales rep for Hearlihy and was in the booth with me. They appeared to be high school students.
One of them stepped forward and started asking questions about the screen printing machine. Since it was my first time witnessing the screen printing machine and I had questions myself that I hadn't been able to ask yet, I quickly tuned in to hear the conversation. Kevin didn't get stumped with the line of questioning that followed, but he very easily could have. I was amazed. I assumed the inquisitive student was in the screen printing competition, so after their conversation ended, I intercepted the young man and asked, "Are you part of the screen printing competition?" He answered no. "Does your school have a screen printing program?" Again he said no. I asked how he knew so much about screen printing, and he said that he had bought himself a starter screen printing package and was looking to upgrade.
Screen printing wasn't even his expertise; his competition was in construction at the national level. He was using his screen printing package to print T-shirts for the school and for other programs and businesses as a side activity. He designs the graphics and does all of this work and taught himself how to be an expert at it just for fun, not for a grade, not for a medal, not for recognition, but because he was an amazing student. I expressed how impressed I was to this young man, he thanked me, and I wished him the best of luck with his competition.
I'm sure every student there could have left me with that same impression. Working for an education company, you don't get a lot of chances to make a connection with the students you are working so hard for. When you finally do get to meet one, you can only hope that the experience will be as amazing as the one I had.
Take away corporate sponsors and volunteers, and the largest annual conference in Kansas City likely would not exist. The second day of SkillsUSA Championships, slated for June 23-24, is considered the single greatest day of industry volunteerism in America.
Nearly 2,000 volunteers, officials, and judges from business and industry invest about 60,000 hours of their time during that week to ensure that the more than 5,600 student competitors in 96 hands-on skill and leadership contests enjoy a memorable experience at the national event.
Hearlihy, a division of Pitsco Education and longtime leading provider of drafting supplies, is a sponsor of the Architectural Drafting competition, which attracts about 75 competitors who are state champions at the secondary and postsecondary levels.
Hearlihy is donating an Architect/Engineer Drafting Kit for the top three placers in each of the two divisions and is providing eraser shields and drafting pencils for all contestants.
"We are proud to be a part of the architectural drafting competition through SkillsUSA," said Hearlihy Representative Kevin Bolte. "This organization has done a tremendous job cultivating student interest in so many career fields. We're happy to play a small part in the national championships."
The Architectural Drafting event is cochaired by Tom Bendorf and Marie Boatright. Boatright, a senior project architect with Wellner Architects, Inc., in Kansas City, helps procure prizes and participation rewards for all competitors, as well as writes the drafting problem statement that students must address during the competition.
"It is extremely important to have corporate partners such as Hearlihy, Autodesk, Chief Architect, and others," Boatright said. "We have a limited budget for our competition." In addition to the Hearlihy prizes, first-place finishers will receive a laptop, and all top-three finishers will be given textbooks, software, and other donated items.
For years, Boatright attended the SkillsUSA Championships with her parents, who serve as volunteers, and in 2007 she served as a judge in the Architectural Drafting competition. She's never looked back and doesn't mind using vacation days to work with some of the top aspiring architects in the country.
"It doesn't surprise me as much as it warms my heart to see that there are young people who have such great talents and care to do great work," Boatright said. "The entries by the winners are usually of a very high quality. To be a winner in Architectural Drafting, you have to know your craft."
Learn more about SkillsUSA. Check out other news from Pitsco Education, LEGO Education, or Hearlihy at our online newsroom.
Hearlihy is a drafting student's paradise. We have a large selection of affordable drafting equipment, tools, paper, and other related supplies. Whether you teach large classes of drafting students or your students are homeschooled, we have a kit that fits your need. Each student has his or her own preferences when it comes to drafting supplies, and we can customize kits for a classroom or an individual.
We offer Rhino CAD Software for homeschool students and have a full line of reasonably priced drafting, blueprint reading, architectural design, and engineering books. Our products have a wealth of support material for homeschool parents who may need assistance with teaching their students drafting.
For a contextual lesson, have your student draft a set of blueprints and then build their design with our dimensioned lumber. We also carry house/structure building kits that are perfect hands-on projects. Building green is easy to teach with our selection of green architecture house kits, books, and videos.
You can view the homeschool products for drafting that we suggest here. To receive our catalog and check out the many products we carry, click here.
At Pitsco, we obviously believe that hands-on learning is a crucial component to a classroom in order to reach all types of students. But did you know that many research studies confirm the benefits? Following are a few findings from various studies in the past 20 years:
How many teachers reading this wish that your students' parents had more opportunities to get their children involved in science? Well, you are not alone. According to a recent survey, 500 teachers were asked that similar question and 94% of them agreed. In the same survey, though, more than half of the 506 parents involved in the survey acknowledged they could use more help to assist their child's knowledge in science.
The survey, conducted by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, revealed that only 15% of the parents considered science a subject they felt "most comfortable" talking to their children about. This information is in agreement with the 77% of teachers that said that parents don't feel comfortable talking about science with their children. So, what are parents to do?
The NSTA Science Matters initiative Web site has a great list of tips available to parents who need some ideas on how to engage their children in science. The list includes activities such as going to the zoo and museums, talking about science-related news stories that happen in the world around them, and doing science experiments at home.
Pitsco Education is unique in the fact that it is not exclusive to teachers or schools with large orders. We cater to anyone that has an interest in hands-on STEM products. Parents, please feel free to browse our Web site for ideas and activities that you might want to do with your kids. Most of our products are available in single kits as well as class packs.
If you would like to receive our catalog, please click here. To view the press release on the survey, visit http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/gn-nsf050710.php. To read more tips from Science Matters, visit http://www.nsta.org/sciencematters/tips.aspx.
The beauty of learning hands on is that it encourages alternative thinking - thinking that leads outside of the textbook or outside of the classroom even. It opens possibilities and provides experience and a deeper understanding. Hands-on learning allows students to come up with alternative solutions and recognize that there is more than one way to do the same thing.
The Pitsco T-Bot II is a very amazing educational tool, teaching students the concepts of hydraulics, simple machines, and the fundamentals of robotics. It consists of a series of syringes and tubes that, when filled with water, control the movement of laser-cut pieces connected together to make a robotic arm.
This product, like most of the Pitsco products, comes unassembled, and the students build the T-Bot II to perform activities with the completed hydraulic arm. A STEM video and a Teacher's Guide are available that help both the teacher and the students to use this product.
Last month we asked teachers to send in activities, to both Pitsco and Hearlihy, that they have created using our products to share with other teachers. We received a really innovative idea using the T-Bot II as a guide that we wanted to share.
This version of the T-Bot II comes from Don Butler at Maize High School. Don, we appreciate your sharing your idea with us. Thank you for providing a hands-on experience for your students, and I hope that Pitsco will continue to inspire you to create alternative forms of learning and thinking. Don wrote about his creation and provided the images below.
I developed this head and used the same principles as the T-Bot II hydraulic arm. The whole head rotates, the head moves up and down, the mouth opens and shuts, and the eyes rotate. It still needs tweaking but was enjoyed by my robotics class. It took two-plus weeks to construct. I made patterns for the individual parts and supplied students a set of pre-sized plywood pieces and a bag of needed hardware. They did the cutting, sanding, and assembly. I am currently working on an eagle that will work on the same basic principle but on a 3-D format.
Share your activities with other teachers and we will post them on this blog. Send them to Product-Tips@hearlihy.com.
If you have ever picked up any of our great catalogs and mailed in the order form, you might have noticed that Pitsco is located in beautiful Pittsburg, Kan. That's right, Kansas. Though Kansas is centrally located in the continental United States, it doesn't mean we have a lot of opportunity to see our customers, nor do our customers get to see us.
We do get to see our customers at the conventions we attend every year, and we are grateful for that. Being able to visit with our customers is always a great experience, but we wanted a way to be in contact with even more customers and meet even more teachers and educators. How were we going to do that being in Kansas?
So, we decided to join Facebook. Why not? What better way to get to know our customers and for our customers to get to know us? We hope that this will be a great way for customers to find out the latest in education news and get links to great resources and various promotions, contests, and of course funny pictures. Who doesn't love funny pictures?
So, check out our page, become a fan, look at our pictures, tell your friends, and get to know us. We'd love to get to know you too!
Our page is at http://www.facebook.com/PitscoEducation. You can also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pitscoed.
Whether you are looking to supplement your drafting supply closet or launch a technical drafting program, we have everything needed to build your classroom. Not every class is the same, so we have a large range of products to complement any classroom.
Complete drafting kits are available at affordable prices. We've combined our best products into a convenient kit. If you don't find the prepackaged kit that you want, we can customize a kit for you. So, you can create a unique kit that is exactly what your students need.
Our drafting machines come in a variety of sizes, and our parallel rules are designed for smooth movement. We have an assortment of quality drafting tables and flat file storage systems for your classroom. The Archi-Board and Perspective Drawing Board are excellent teaching tools to introduce perspective drawing or help students that are struggling with the concept of vanishing points.
We offer a full line of software, workbooks, and videos to enhance your lesson plan and provide a mixture of support material for drafting, engineering, and architectural design. Consumable supplies are reasonably priced and are readily available to ship as needed.
Building your classroom doesn't have to be complicated. We are here to recommend the perfect drafting product for your particular requests and assist with anything you need.
Call our friendly customer service team at 866-622-1003 or e-mail any questions to Product-Tips@hearlihy.com.
Hearlihy is challenging all classrooms across the United States to find new and exciting ways to get students energized!
How do you and your students use Hearlihy products? Have you developed a great lesson for the Straw Bale House Kit? Maybe you've implemented a new way to learn from the Apprentice Screen Printing Package or have a new technique to test the strength of a balsa bridge?
If you are a teacher, home educator, after-school program director, or otherwise working with students (K-12) within the education field, submit your activity or activities for us to post and share on hearlihy.com. To submit your activities, simply e-mail them to Product-Tips@hearlihy.com.
For almost 40 years, Pitsco Education has been known for providing hands-on learning in the classroom. Our kits are designed to allow students to learn by doing. We are devoted to being an active part of student and teacher success. As a company, we use in our own community the same hands-on approach that we encourage in the classroom.
Since the beginning, Pitsco has supported local and national organizations by providing funding or products. Pitsco continues to give back, and in addition to giving financially, Pitsco has encouraged its nearly 200 employees to give of themselves by supplying volunteers - providing hands-on giving, if you will.
Pitsco Cares, an internal campaign, was formed a little more than a year ago and offers an excellent source for employees to give back to our community. Our Pitsco Cares team actively seeks out where help is needed and recruits employees to give of their time and talents to help fill that need in our community.
Whether it is hands-on learning in the classroom or hands-on giving in the community, Pitsco encourages getting active and making a difference.
The following article from The Star Ledger, reported that according to a national survey, companies are willing to pay higher salaries for Engineers who are in high demand.
College students graduating with math-related degrees this year are expected to command the highest starting salaries, according to a national survey released yesterday.
Engineering disciplines dominated the list of top-paid bachelor's degrees, occupying eight of 10 spots in the National Association of Colleges and Employer's quarterly rankings. The remaining two spots went to computer science and information sciences and systems. Despite the recession, these technical majors are flourishing because demand continues to outstrip supply, association officials said.
Petroleum engineering, the leading major for several years running, secured an average starting salary of $86,220, up 6 percent from last year. Meanwhile, the average starting salary for all bachelor's degree graduates fell 2 percent, to $48,351, the association said.
"There are fewer and fewer of these technical graduates each year, and companies are willing to offer them higher salaries just because their numbers are so limited," said Andrea Koncz, employment information manager at the Bethlehem, Pa.-based association.
Petroleum engineers, for example, currently account for less than 1 percent of the 1.4 million bachelor's students who graduate in the country each year. And, according to a 2007 study by the association, the national pool of engineering majors has shrunk by 2 percent a year - even as other disciplines such as psychology, communications and performing arts have seen increases.
But the rankings came as no surprise to the association, which has conducted the quarterly poll since 1960.
So why aren't more college students flocking to these majors? "We found students are more influenced by what they like to do," she said, "as opposed to making a lot of money."
We have the capability to customize any kit the way you want it. If the drafting kits we have available are not exactly what you need, we can assemble custom kits from any of the products shown in our catalog and on the Web site! The items you select come to you as individual kits ready to distribute to your students. Your kit is assigned a unique identifying number and can be reordered as often as needed. Here's how to get a quote:
If you do not have a catalog order form, please call 866-622-1003. To request a catalog, please click here.Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery of custom kits.
We will be in Charlotte, N.C., at the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) convention from March 18-19. If you are planning to attend, we'd love to have you stop by and see us at Booths 403 and 405.
Green construction is much more than placing a solar panel on a house. Techniques used worldwide are more natural and sustainable than the typical home construction in the U.S. Hearlihy has committed to green architecture and construction with a line of kits that explore these techniques:
These kits supply students with a hands-on experience building a 1/2-inch scale model home using minimal lumber and incorporating nature into the heating and cooling systems. Each kit includes materials, plans, and illustrated instructions. Turn to Green Architecture: Living, Design, and Construction to expand student understanding of these building techniques, the toxicity of standard building materials, energy usage, the Smart House, and other related topics. Written by Paul Wallach, this is a solid introductory text to building green.More in-depth information can be found in the books The Rammed Earth House, The Straw Bale House, and The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. Related video programs include Building with Awareness and design e2.Beyond architecture and construction, Hearlihy incorporates alternative energy by offering a variety of solar, wind, and fuel cell kits, equipment, videos, and books. Learn more about these green kits and resources.
Check out other news from Pitsco Education at our online newsroom.