How To Draw For Carpenter
Beeing years in this market, I've been facing so many different carpenters. Those are the one that I used to work with and also the one that my home owner appointed with. Either one, I'm still the one have to coordinate the fabrication and the installation of the carpentry works.
As a perfectionist designer, I always provide drawings for the carpenters that I'm working with. Because I believe, drawings is important to keep all the products built accordingly to be as close as possible with the design shown on 3d drawings that I propose to my home owner.
So here's some tips from me on how to draw for the carpenters :
- Keep it simple. From my experiences, I do notice that different carpenters have different ability to read drawings. So don't make it looks complicated. Otherwise they will feel confuse and lazy to read the drawings and ended up just do anyhow they like.
- Add only the important annotations to keep it well informatived. Top view, front view, side view, section with complete sizes, material type&code will be good enough already.
- Always remember that widely on market now, carpenters are work with solid plywood and also laminate/HPL finishing. Both of these materials are only available on common size of (2400x1200)mm. So we need to be carefull with any full height cabinets. For HDB renovation, this won't be a problem, because mostly HDB ceiling height is 2500mm-2600mm, minus off the 50mm bottom skirting and 50-100mm top frame, we can still have 2400mm full height door panels. But for condos/landed houses the ceiling height might be more than 2800mm, this might need some tricks on fabrication the carpentry carcas. As a good designer, don't forget to indicate on the drawings how would you want the joining to be. In this way, carpenter will understand that we control the looks of the carpentry works, not them. There'll be no guessing game by the carpenters as well, and normally carpenter will feel more at ease too. If they're feeling happy, the whole process will be easier for everyones.
- Do site measurement before we draw the carpentry detail drawings. Even though carpenters will usually measure on site again after they read our drawings, but we also need to draw it based on the site measurement. Always beware that actual site measurement will always have discrepancies with the floor plan. So when our drawings are based on actual site measurement, there'll be minimum discrepancies between our drawings and the carpenter site measurement. Yes, there'll still be discrepancies, because the way we measure is not as detail as the carpenter do. They will normally measure the bottm and the top wal to wall, because there's no 100% straight wall, we definitely will face slightly slanted wall no matter how perfect the workmanship is.
- Give different hatch/color for each material indicated on the drawings. This way it will be much more easier for carpenters to read the drawings.
- Give proper scale for the drawings. The common scale for detail drawings for carpenters are 1:25 or 1:20 and 1:10 or 1:5 for any section details if you have any parts that you need to highlight. Drawings in scale will help carpenter to count any diversion like drawers or door panels. Avoid to small drawings, it only makes the carpenter difficult to read the sizes/annotations of the drawings.
- Use handy size of paper. Normally the biggest paper size we can use is A3 size paper. This size can catch 1:25 or 1:20 scale drawings and yet still very handy to carry or to paste on the wall.
- Attach the 3d perspective drawings on the same page of your detail drawings, to help the carpenter get a better vision on the carpentry design.
- Put your contact number on the drawings to get the carpenter to reach you at ease for any problem or any dispute on the drawings.
That's all for now. Will keep it updated with any new thoughts that pass me by.
