Is That Even Straight?
Engineering paper is great for alignment and drawing things to scale.
Last updated April 2019
I wish I had known about engineering paper before I went to college. The first time I found out that it existed was when I was out of paper and asked my friend sitting next to me for a sheet of paper. He reached into his bag, grabbed his notebook, tore off a sheet, and handed me a piece of light green paper with a faint grid on the front (due to the graph on the back). “What is this?” I asked. “A life-changer,” he said confidently. Ever since then, I’ve always had a notebook of engineering paper in my backpack.
Usefulness
You can use it for all sorts of things such as taking notes, graphing a function, making a rough sketch of a part, drawing a part to scale, free body diagrams, circuit schematics, or making block diagrams of your system. I’ve honestly never used it to take notes, but I’ve used it for the others. See the images below to see how it can be useful!
Free Body Diagrams
Free body diagrams (FBDs) are extremely useful when conducting an analysis on a support structure, or object in general. They help you visualize and solve the magnitude and direction of forces that are acting on that object.
High-Level Architecture
Drawing out a high-level architecture of your system is very advantageous. It’s one of those things that you should always do when you’re first starting a design. You’re able to quickly see how many different components are involved, how the devices communicate with each other, how they’re powered, etc.
VHDL Programming
VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) can be extremely difficult to get circuits to synthesize correctly. One way to help make this process easier is to draw the circuit first, then start writing the VHDL. It’s easier to debug the code with a block diagram, if you get an error.
What did we learn?
- Engineering paper can be used to neatly draw out your designs.
- Engineering notebooks can help you stay organized. For example, you could have a notebook for your Arduino and Raspberry Pi 3 projects, one for your part drawings, and one for your circuit schematics.