One of the best ways to communicate one's ideas is through some form of picture or drawing. This is especially true for the engineer. The purpose of this guide is to give you the basics of engineering sketching and drawing.

We will treat "sketching" and "drawing" as one. "Sketching" generally means freehand drawing. "Drawing" usually means using drawing instruments, from compasses to computers to bring precision to the drawings.

This is just an introduction. Don't worry about understanding every detail right now - just get a general feel for the language of graphics.

We hope you like the object in Figure 1, because you'll be seeing a lot of it. Before we get started on any technical drawings, let's get a good look at this strange block from several angles.