Checking is probably the most significant thing that can help you. I’m going to assume you’re in the world where you create 2D drawings and don’t primarily rely on MBD.
Self checking is a good start. As others have said print out a copy of your drawing and go over it, make a check list if it helps but generally look at things like are all required views and dimensions to make it present, all notes required present, does it comply with whatever drawing standards your company has… I’d use colored pencil not marker, that way you can erase it if need be. Use different colors to indicate things that need deleting/changing (typically red), things that stay the same (yellow) and then comments or questions for you to come back to later (blue or green). In places that are strict about it Designers should normally only use green with red yellow & blue reserved for Checkers but this doesn’t sound like your place.
Repeat until you can’t find any problems.
There are two obvious problems with self checking:
1. You can’t really check what you don’t know/understand/aren’t familiar with etc
2. Being intimately involved with the item you can’t always ‘see the wood for the trees’ as others have mentioned. Leaving it on your desk overnight and looking at it the next day helps but even then you’ll still miss stuff from being overly familiar with it. If nothing else on notes you may well understand what you mean but perhaps no one else will!
The first can be corrected by learning/training/experience but these take time (others have made some good suggestions on how to improve this area so I wont say much however reading relevant books, spending time with more experienced staff and/or on shop floor and familiarizing yourself with any relevant industry/drawing standards are good ideas)
This is why any self respecting (in my opinion) Engineering organization has some kind of checking process by at least one other party.
Ideally this will be dedicated checker(s) with many years of experience, familiarity with the relevant drawing standards etc. (This type of checker is a dying breed though as managers seem to think that with CAD etc we shouldn’t make mistakes and so independent checking isn’t needed any more.) 2nd best is just to have the most qualified staff member available do the check. 3rd best is just to get any warm body that is vaguely familiar with drawings to look at it.
This actually achieves two things, first it catches the majority of problems with the drawing in hand. Second it provides a source of information to learn from. Don’t just blindly incorporated the check marks, try to understand them and apply them next time round, any that you don’t fully understand ask about and if necessary research. I virtually learnt to draw by having my initial drawings bled (bled - due to the amount of red ink/pencil looking like blood) over by a couple of the senior design Engineers. I early on set it as my goal to get a drawing through without getting any red on it. To this day that remains a rare feet!
A word of warning on copying previous designs. If they were good designs and technology hasn’t moved on much etc then this can be really useful. However, blindly copying designs, especially if you don’t fully understand them, means you’ll also copy any errors, problems, insufficiencies etc and perhaps not incorporate changes that might be beneficial.
Also a word of warning about relying too heavily on what the shop floor tells you. They primarily care about ease of manufacture. They typically care less about functionality or inspection/quality control. As well as talking to the shop floor talk to quality &/or whoever does inspection. They also for the most part don’t have the level of technical/academic engineering knowledge that graduates (or even people who’ve gone through an apprenticeship or similar) have. This isn’t an excuse for arrogance but a warning to consider carefully what they tell you, not just blindly do it.
Not meaning to down play DFMA but when creating a drawing the most important thing is probably ensuring performance/functionality of the component. Second is ensuring that it is possible to verify performance/functionality from the drawing (i.e. supports inspection). Creating the drawing so that the part is easy to manufacture/ drawing is easy to manufacture from comes after these 2, you have to make sure the part can be made and try to take into account DFMA principles but this comes after basic function and verification of function.
An obvious example is in dimension schemes, dimension schemes should be created to aid inspection more than manufacturing. A lot of people dimension the way they thing the machinist will want the information, to centerlines or centers of arcs or other theoretical points without considering how these dimensions are to be checked, especially after the piece is taken off the tool. Inspection dimensions can always (at least I can’t think of any exceptions) be converted into the dimensions the machinist needs however it doesn’t always work the other way around.
Just my 2C worth (or looking how long it is maybe 10C
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