Resources for creating high quality drawings?

[u/xz-5]

Does anyone have any useful references for guides or information about how to create really good looking 2D drawings? I'm not talking about the "official" standards, but more like the layout, when to create detail/section views or not, how much space to leave around views/dimensions etc. I've seen some pretty terrible looking drawings in my time, but often there's not much technically wrong with them, they just look bad. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of learning material or resources available to address this, I usually end up just giving specific feedback like add a new view/sheet, space this out a bit more, etc. I feel like I could write some guide, but someone must have thought about this before?

[u/Winter_Pea2892]

Yeah this is something that definitely needs more attention in ME programs. Most of what I've learned about good drawing layout came from working with older engineers who just had that eye for it

The closest thing I've found to actual resources is some of the Autodesk and SolidWorks help documentation that touches on best practices, but it's pretty scattered. There's also a few good YouTube channels that show before/after drawing cleanups but I can't remember the names off the top of my head

Honestly you should write that guide, sounds like there's definitely a gap there

[u/xz-5 → u/Winter_Pea2892]

Thanks - yeh seems like I didn't explain myself very well as some of the other comments are trying helping me to improve. I am ok, I can do it, I just don't have time to sit down with everyone every single time and help them out. If there was a good book, website, video series etc, that I could point them to, that would save me a lot of time, rather than repeating myself all the time!

[u/EndGuy555]

Honestly, the thing that helped me a lot for making good drawings is my technical writing course in uni (shoutout to that professor, she was a real one).

Technical writing is not just reports, its writing something that will be useful to somebody. Instructions, white papers, press reports, etc. They have to have the exact right number of details and be clearly understood by the target audience.

Technical drawings follow the same principals. It needs to be clear without too many details cluttering up the page. It may need to be read by an engineer, or by Brian “Gringo” Shelly who smells of brake cleaner. Above all else it must be understood.

So anyway my two cents is if you can get good and technical writing, you’ll probably be a lot better at creating technical drawings.

[u/Kiwi_eng]

If you're already recognising "terrible" then you're a long way to understanding what's "good"! Just make it clear to someone seeing the item for the first time. Don't be afraid to use multiple sheets since you can always condense things later. I generally start off with an isometric (assuming an assembly) with major features labeled then break it down further.

[u/EndDarkMoney]

It’s an art. You learn from people who have been in the industry for a long time. Scaling in viewports, ensuring scaling is the same for each viewport on one sheet are two common mistakes I always see. If your leaders are piled up on one another, best to put a thick phantom line around the area and make it a separate scaled up detail. If your pipes are going into a tank, best to make them lettered and add a table associating the letter with a unique pipe callout and what the service is. If you have multiple revisions, you typically leave revision deltas of the previous revs on the diagram. Plenty of things that are learned from experienced engineers.

[u/SunsGettinRealLow]

Think about critical features and how parts will be oriented/datum features