CAD Standards

Overview

This page is to create a unified approach to modeling, drafting and design of open source hardware. Please read thoroughly if you will be doing any CAD work.

Discussions of major changes to the standards outlined here should take place in CAD Standards Discussions before this page is changed.

Units

All designs should be eventually be available in both metric and imperial.

It is preference for all initial designs to be done in metric as that is the world standard. It is easy to get metric sized materials in the US, but often difficult to get imperial sizes in other countries.

On site at FeF, the prototypes are being fabricated with imperial units and material sizes. As such the initial CAD for the products developed is done in imperial. Discussion has already begun on the availability of metric materials from local material suppliers

Designs must be carefully reviewed as pure mathematical conversions from standard to metric will not yield designs that are able to be fabricated properly as material sizes and shapes vary between the two systems.

However with a little time and effort all designs should be able to be converted to metric. Ideally, once a design is finalized we should be able to produce two, slightly different versions of it. Then the user can choose to build using one or the other, depending on what tools/parts are more readily available in that area.

Drawings

Creating drawings that follow standardized formats is important in providing a consistent readability and quality of the open source hardware tools.

Title Block

The OSE Title Block is available in ANSI A, B, C, D, and E sizes. Sheet 1 of any drawing will be the full title block while Sheets 2+ utilize a reduced title block that contains only the pertinent information to associate it with Sheet 1.

Please provide conversions of these title blocks to native formats in other programs if you have the capability to do so and add them to the following table.