Architectural drawing

An architectural drawing or architect's drawing is a technical drawing of a building or building project that falls within the definition of architecture. Architectural drawings are used by architects and others for a number of purposes: to develop a design idea into a coherent proposal, to communicate ideas and concepts, to show clients the merits of a design, to assist a building contractor in construction based on design intent, to record the design and planned development, or to document a building that already exists. Architectural drawings are made according to a set of conventions, including particular views such as floor plans and sections, sheet sizes, units of measurement, scales, annotation and cross-referencing. Historically, drawings were made in ink on paper or similar materials, and copies had to be made by hand. The twentieth century saw a shift to drawing on tracing paper so that mechanical copies could be made more efficiently. The development of the computer had a major impact on the methods used to design and create technical drawings, making manual drawing less common and opening up new possibilities of form using organic shapes and complex geometry. Today, most architectural drawings are created using CAD software.