Technical drawing tool

Tools such as templates and lettering guides assisted in the drawing of repetitive elements such as circles, ellipses, schematic symbols and text.

[2] Although a variety of styli were developed in ancient times and were still being used in the 18th century, quills were generally used as the main drawing tool.

[2] In the 17th century, a stylus that could draw a line with a specific width called a ruling pen was developed.

The basic model was maintained for a long time, with minor modifications, until the 1930s when the German technical drawing pens came to the market.

[2] Artists (including Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, Nicholas Bion and George Adams) generally made drawing tools for themselves.

For instance in Finland Grafos was commonly used as a primary drawing tool still in the early 1970s.

Equipment changed radically during the 1990s, when computer-aided design almost completely ousted drawing by hand.

Drawings are not necessarily produced in hard copy at all, and if they are needed they are printed automatically by a computer program.

Bad contrast of the lead line in general is problematic when photocopying, but new scanning copy techniques have improved the final result.

In most cases, the final drawings are drawn with ink, on either plastic or tracing paper.

More recent practice is to use self-adhesive drafting tape to secure paper to the board, including the sophisticated use of individualized adhesive dots from a dispensing roll.

Some drawing boards are magnetized, allowing paper to be held down by long steel strips.

Boards used for overlay drafting or animation may include registration pins or peg bars to ensure alignment of multiple layers of drawing media.

An alternative to the T-square is the parallel bar which is permanently attached to the drawing board.

It has a set of cables and pulleys to allow it to be positioned anywhere on the drawing surface while still remaining parallel to the bottom of the board.

[6]: 35–36 A drafting machine allows easy drawing of parallel lines over the paper.

Another form, the beam compass, has the pivot point and pen holder joined by a trammel bar, useful when drawing very large radius arcs.

Templates contain pre-dimensioned holes in the right scale to accurately draw a symbol or sign.

Templates are also available for other geometric shapes such as squares and for drawing ellipses, as well as many specialized varieties for other purposes.

There are also specific templates to provide user with the most common symbols in use in different branches of designing.

For example, the architect templates can be used to draw different sized doors with their "opening arcs", building and equipment symbols and furniture.

A geometry template is a piece of clear plastic with cut-out shapes and/or curves for use mainly by primary and secondary school students.

In Australia, where geometry templates are common school equipment, known brands include Mathomat and MathAid.

A spline is a flexible ruler, usually rubber or plastic coated with a metal "backbone", which can be smoothly shaped to follow a desired curve and allows drawing a smooth line between initial reference points.

It was durable and held up to handling, but it was difficult to use in modern whiteprints for reproduction, and shrinking was a concern.

The most commonly used materials are polyesters, and sometimes also PVC or polycarbonate; arguably, a proprietary eponym or genericized trademark for this is called Mylar.

Dry transfer decals can speed the production of repetitive drawing elements such as borders, title blocks, line types, shading, and symbols.

They were frequently used in the production of schematic drawings, maps, and printed circuit board artwork, for example.