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How to Interpret Drawing Per ANSI

Engineering and design blueprints and drawings reveal all pertinent dimensions, positions and tolerances for the construction or fabrication of a product. ANSI is an organization that develops standard methods of documenting the information on a blueprint or engineering drawing. To read a drawing that conforms to ANSI standards, you need to be familiar with the particular symbols used by ANSI to indicate different measurements such as angles, lengths, diameters and depths. ANSI standards change almost yearly in some manner or another, so make sure you keep up to date with all the changes if you have to read and interpret drawings on a regular basis.

Things You'll Need

Copy of ANSI standards

Instructions

- 1
  Review the current standards for the type of drawing you are interpreting. There are a number of sets of standards available through ANSI that specify how items are written or drawn on a drawing.
- 2
  Read the specifications for the standard found in the official declaration of the ANSI standard for drawings and blueprints. You can obtain a copy of the specifications and the official text by purchasing them from ANSI. This will help you familiarize yourself with the standards used for lines, dimensions, and tolerances and allow you to interpret the items found on the drawing. In places where there is no notation with a dimension on the drawing without a tolerance, you will be able to apply the standard tolerance as noted in the ANSI standard to the particular dimension.
- 3
  Read the drawing by taking special note of each dimension and tolerance provided and correlating the dimension and tolerances with a particular item on the drawing.
- 4
  Check the information placed in the reference section of the drawing. The reference box contains notations regarding the part number and revision number, the date of the drawing, scale of the drawing items and any other information required to interpret the drawing.

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