Documentation: Drawing and File types

What type of drawing documentation do you need?

That question depends upon your product of course but if you are designing a product with parts and subassemblies, then most likely you will need some of the following drawing or file types:

Fabrication Drawings

Assembly Drawings

Assembly instructions

Artwork/Gerber files

Schematics

Most of these file types are probably self-explanatory (artwork/gerber files are used to fabricate circuit boards; schematics is an electrical representation of the circuit board) but I would like to discuss one way to reduce the amount of records that need to be created and controlled. When it comes to the use of assembly drawings in addition to assembly instructions, I have successfully used just assembly drawings to detail out how a part is manufactured or assembled. A lot of the graphical views of the part are typically stored in some engineer’s Autocad or ProE files so it is a matter of pulling out these views and simply adding instructions to them. This alleviates the need to create separate assembly instructions. I have experienced situations where an engineer updates a fabrication drawing that directly impacted the assembly instruction and the assembly instruction never got updated. Having documentation to perform the tasks at hand is important but minimizing the maintenance of documents is also important so that your limited resources maintain their focus. Return to Documentation