Rhino Red Prints Blog
Cutaway Drawings
May
Cutaway Drawings are another interesting type of drawings. They are made to show up the interior of the object, usually with thorough description which part is which. Those can usually be found in books, mostly about planes, ships, tanks or submarines. Interested in the subject are sometimes clueless what is behind the curtain and a sneak peak is in order. Such drawings are made in 3D, just like design engineering blueprints.
What is a cutaway – the answer is pretty straight forward. You can first imagine the object seen from a random perspective. Usually, the perspective is from above and with a slight angle, allowing the spectator to view the most of the artefact. Then – virtually – elements from the outside if it are removed. For example the skin of the aircraft or the submarine. That reveals what’s behind it. Various sections become immediately apparent and you get an idea what goes where. Just like in school they teach children about human organism. But things sometimes do not stop there.
Let’s take an aircraft drawing for example. If you remove the outer layers, you still still have an engine, which is usually covered by thermal barrier. Cutaway drawings often show this one removed too. Some go even further, removing the elements of the elements. In other words, if we see the above mentioned engine, the firewall might be removed for clarity, but then, the combustion chamber can also be stripped. Then, you can even see a blown image of what’s in there too. Usually in the form of a bubble somewhere near the original cutaway drawing.
Once you look inside, you can see that there are many more layers and the outer shell that we usually admire is just the beginning of a long journey of knowledge and awe. Those drawings can also be called blueprints, although they are usually slightly different and resemble more modern drawing idea. They are based on white paper and the ones you will see will be most likely painted in black lines. So they are not exactly blueprints, considering the technology used for creating the latter. Nevertheless, those are part of the large family of drawings, as much as any other blueprint, whiteprint or a vector file out there. Their purpose though, is slightly different.