sandr037

Plans were probably the first type of construction drawing to be used. There are examples from 18 th dynasty Egypt (on papyrus) and from the city of Nippur Mesopotamia (on clay tablet) around 1500 BC. Not long after this elevations show up in the archeological evidence, and it seems an easy step from there to putting the two types of drawings together in a single drawing. I admit that I have not found any example of this in artifacts from the ancient world. This doesn’t surprise me much since such drawing would have been used for on-site (draw in the dirt) explanations to the workers, not for governmental propaganda or record keeping). Suffice it to say (and this is my own, unsubstantiated opinion) that plan projection drawings must have been one of the graphic tools of builders early on. In any case, it has been a favorite of architects and engineers in more recent times. Projecting a plan into 3 dimensions is quite easy - draw the plan of an object; rotate it to any angle; and then ...

To make an elevation projection you must first view the world from the side. No, this is not a trick! I mean it! Actually, this is the normal viewpoint of humans. Walk down a street in your neighborhood and you will be confronted by the sides of houses. The plans may be known or completely unknown, but the elevations are easy to see. An architect or builder will probably think in 3 dimensions while walking the neighborhood, but a “normal” person will see the sides of the houses, and react to them first. Anyway… Start with a square wall with a circle drawn inside. Extrude it away from you and… Voila! A cube! The main problem in drawing elevation projections is distortion in a familiar plan. If a cylinder (standing on end like a coffee cup) is created using the original cube you will find that… The circular plan of the cylinder seems to be stretched into an oval. This can be easily adjusted by eye, but it is still a problem that limits the use of this drawing type in architecture, and m...