Engineering & CAD drafting insights.
The ASTCAD Engineering Design and Drafting Blog — practical tutorials, software guides, Australian standards walkthroughs and engineering case studies from our team. Over 200 articles covering CAD drafting, BIM, FEA, mechanical design and structural detailing.
Editor’s pick this week.
AS 4100 Base Plate Design: The Limit State Procedure, Step by Step
The four limit state checks a column base plate has to pass under AS 4100 and AS 3600 — bearing, plate bending, anchorage and weld — and what the shop drawing must state.
Read articleLatest from the blog.
AS 4100 Base Plate Design: The Limit State Procedure, Step…
The four limit state checks a column base plate has to pass under AS 4100 and AS 3600 — bearing, plate bending, anchorage and weld — ...
How to Choose the Right 3D Printing Material for Your…
3D printing materials compared — how to choose the right material for your project across automotive, aerospace, healthcare and product...
Outsourcing CAD Drafting in Australia: When It Works and What…
Outsourcing CAD drafting is one of those decisions that looks purely financial and almost never is. The engineering firms that get value ...
What Does CADD Stand For? CAD vs CADD Explained
CADD stands for Computer-Aided Design and Drafting. Here is how CADD differs from CAD, and which term to use in an Australian scope of wo...
Australian Electrical Drawing Symbols: AS/NZS Standards Guide
Every electrical drawing is a contract between the person who drew it and the person who builds from it — and symbols are the language ...
AI in CAD Drafting: What Actually Works in Practice (and…
“Will AI replace drafters?” is the wrong question. After running a CAD drafting practice through the last two years of AI dra...
IGES vs STEP File Formats: Differences and a Conversion Guide
IGES vs STEP explained: what each format is, when to use which, and how to convert between them without losing solids, assembly structure...
AS 1657 Platform Design: 7 Mistakes in Non-Compliant Designs
The 7 AS 1657 compliance mistakes we see most in platform and walkway designs, what the standard requires, and the lightest-touch fix for...
Step-by-Step Tutorial: Creating Your First CAD Drawing
Learning how to create your first CAD Drawing can feel overwhelming at first, but once you understand the process, it becomes an exciting...
What is CAD Drafting? A Complete Guide for Australian Engineers
If you work in engineering, construction, or manufacturing in Australia, you've almost certainly heard the term CAD drafting — but what...
Claude AI and Autodesk Fusion 360: Automating CAD Modelling and…
How Anthropic's Claude AI integrates with Autodesk Fusion 360 to automate CAD modelling, generate scripts, and accelerate engineering des...
CAD Drafting Costs in Australia: What Drives Your Quote (2026…
Understanding CAD drafting cost in Australia is the first step to budgeting your engineering or construction project accurately. If you'r...
What the ASTCAD CAD drafting blog covers
The ASTCAD CAD drafting blog is written by working drafters and engineers, which shapes what gets published: practical tutorials on AutoCAD, SolidWorks and Revit workflows, plain-language explainers on Australian drafting standards like AS 1100 and AS 4100, career guidance for drafters entering or advancing in the industry, and honest assessments of the technology waves — AI, automation, 3D printing — as they actually land in Australian drawing offices. Case-study articles walk through real project decisions, and conversion guides cover the file-format questions every multi-software office hits weekly.
How to use this blog
Articles are organised by discipline and linked between related topics, so a reader arriving on a DWG conversion guide will find the neighbouring articles on CAD standards and software selection without hunting. If you are researching a service — structural drafting, 3D scanning, BIM — the relevant articles link through to the service pages where our team can pick up the conversation. New articles are published regularly; the most useful entry points are linked below.
If there is a CAD, drafting or engineering documentation topic you want covered — or a question a client keeps asking you — tell us through the contact page. Reader questions have driven several of the most-read articles on this blog.
The blog also serves a quieter purpose: it is where we document the recurring questions from real client projects — the DWG version conflicts, the standards interpretation debates, the software licensing traps — so the next person searching that exact problem finds a straight answer written by someone who solved it last month. If an article here saved you an afternoon, that is the metric we publish against.
For readers who prefer a starting map: the standards articles anchor the reference material, the how-to-read-drawings guides serve site teams, the software tutorials serve drafters, and the career series serves people entering the industry. Everything else radiates from those four clusters.
New: AS 4100 Base Plate Design: The Limit State Procedure, Step by Step.
Tutorial: Step-by-step — creating your first CAD drawing.
Guide: CAD automation — a step-by-step implementation guide.