Quantities in parentheses 1

[tz101]

Typically, when authoring work instructions, production routers, or other engineering documents, I am accustomed to enclosing quantities within parentheses within sentences. "Drill Ø.250 hole (6) plcs." would be commonly used nomenclature. Lately, a coworker is critiquing my work and swears by the concept of using numeric values without parentheses for values up to ten, and the spelled out word, followed by the same value in parentheses, for values greater than ten, as in "Chamfer .030 x 45° four plcs." Can anyone shed some light on the commonly preferred practice for engineering documentation?

 

[moon161]

Neither one complies with ANSI, ISO or DIN drafting standards, which are great ways for making drawings that you can reasonably expect someone to understand.

A hole callout complying with these standards would be like 4X Ø .250 THRU. Drill, mill file or grind that hole would be left up to the mfg engineer. I know because I looked at making solidworks fit the company drafting standard for hole callouts I work with and decided it was more than I was up for.

 

[moon161]

Oh I see, you're talking everything but drawings. IDK if any of the above standards apply, but what if you need one million two hundred and thirty-six thousand three hundred twenty four holes in a membrane? Kinda sucks to spell that out, compared 1,236,324 holes.

 

[moon161]

Personally, I don't dig extra punctuation, characters, etc on a drawing, it's like someone wasn't sure what to do and threw in an extra delimiter. Like

NOTES:
1.)
2.)

Just pick one, the . or the ), why both?

 

[moon161]

Just be consistent and unambiguous. /RANT

 

[moon161]

"swears by the concept of using numeric values without parentheses for values up to ten, and the spelled out word, followed by the same value in parentheses, for values greater than ten, as in "Chamfer .030 x 45° four plcs."

Daft, I say, that's more like chamfer .030 x 45° twenty-two (22) places.

NO. Say everything once and only once, that way when you revise it, you don't have to hunt down the extras.

22X .030 x 45° CHAMFER

 

[btrueblood]

(Anything in parentheses is a reference dimension or value, according to the ANSI standards.)
(Or so I have been told)

 

[moon161]

If you really want to be kept up at night, when noting a dimension as reference do you write 4.02 REF or 4.02 REF. ,using a period at the end to note that it's an abbreviation?

 

[tz101]

In non-drawing documentation, I use "REF." In drawings, I default to ANSI () around reference dimensions.