Line Thicknes standards when printing mechanical drawings

Hi everyone,

Regarding printing drawings, can anyone please tell me the line
thickness standards for mechanical drawings, i.e., what are the
thicknesses supposed to be for visible continuous lines that actually
show the part, hidden lines, center lines, dimension lines, text,
border, title block, etc..

As I understand it, the lines that show the part are supposed to be
thick and the dimension, hidden, and center lines, are supposed to be
about 1/2 the thickness of the visible lines of the actual part.

I am using AutoCAD 14 and will probably print the small drawings with a
standard printer on 8.5 X 11 paper. I don't know if some printers run
into problems with lines being too thin and not showing up, I would
guess a thickness of .005" and up should be fine.

Should I just leave all line thickness at the AutoCAD default .010" and
let the machinist change the pen width to their liking ? What do most
people do ? I would like the make the drawings as clear as possible
before sending the DWG files off, and many shops probably don't have
plotters, just standard printers.

I would be interested in learning what most people do with regards to
line thickness, rules of thumb, etc.. Any suggestions on actual
thickness for visible, hidden, and center lines would be great.

Thanks
John

 

Both the UK and the USA have standards for drawings that give this
information I would imagine there is an EU standard as well as an ISO
standard.

JD

 

There are so many standards, it's like there are none at all. Here is my
typical setup:
Contour lines = .04"
Hidden = .02"
Axis (center) = .01"
Text / Annotation = .025"
Dimension = .02"
Title block = .09"
Phantom = .005"
Hatch = .005"
Anything else I judge according to its use and "plottability". With my old
printer I could set line widths to 0 and they would be half a hair wide. A
thing of beauty. With my current machine anything under .005" gets cut up in
segments.
Keep in mind that drawings get faxed, scanned, photocopied and plotted as
pdf. All of these reduce the quality and visibility of the lines.
We have a certain .ctb for large drawings (C, D, E) and another for 8.5X11
and 11X17, for clarity.

Just use your judgement and do a few tests. In the immortal words of my
colleague: "Do your best, and keep your fingers on Ctrl+Z"

Cheers

Dr Fleau aka Pierre

 

Thanks for your feedback Dr. Fleau,

I will just experiment and see what looks best. With my current setup,
it looks like .02" for visible part lines, and then .01" for all the
hidden and center lines looks pretty good.

I am also using different colors for the lines to help further. I found
if you make the part visible lines white, then make the other lines
color lines, even if you print in greyscale, the outline of the part is
darker than the other lines, which makes things look more clear. This
may help in the event someone cannot print in color (rare, but it can
happen if you run out of ink or if the printer stops printing in color
like mine did).

Like you, I also found with my HP printer, if you go much under .005"
the lines get choppy, i.e., continuous lines start looking like hidden
lines.

Thanks again,
John

 

-->
I am also using different colors for the lines to help further. I found
if you make the part visible lines white, then make the other lines
color lines, even if you print in greyscale, the outline of the part is
darker than the other lines, which makes things look more clear.
<--

Well sure ! Of course on screen it's much more useful to use different
colours for better "reading". In your .ctb just make all your lines plot as
Black -not ByColor- and you can use any color you want.

As far as colours go, there simply isn't any widely used standard. Any
combination that makes your piece understandable will do.

Cheers

Dr Fleau