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.
How Businesses prefer 3D CAD over 2D CAD drafting software?
Choosing Between 2D and 3D CAD Applications It's an argument covering 2D vs. 3D CAD applications that rages with developers and designers...
How CAD Design and Drafting Industry fighting New Cyber Threats?
Less than two decades ago, the primary goal of most CAD Design and Drafting organizations was to provide up-to-date CAD workstations and ...
How to be Best Drafter or Designer in your Field
Get set your new year resolutions by adding and establishing some professional goals. Setting goals are crucial progress, especially when...
Cost Effective CAD Solutions for Civil Engineering
Any big projects success depends on cost effective CAD solutions. Project Managers are very careful when it comes to spending money and i...
Drawing specification for patent application
Check This for Part Series For PATENT APPLICATION GUIDE FOR AUSTRALIA AND DRAWING Specification for the patent application Draw...
Patent Application Guide for Australia
This is 2 part series for patent application guide for Australia and Drawing specification for the patent application Part 1: Patent...
Importance of Quality Control for CAD Outsourcing
Are you looking for a CAD project to be outsourced? There are a lot of reasons to outsource. For example, if user have a big project that...
Workflow of Manufacturers benefited by the use of 3D CAD…
No matter what the industry is, it clearly shows that better workflows mean higher efficiency. It includes manufacturing, and effici...
Design a Custom Duct or Rail in SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D
Solidworks Electrical 2D and 3D Create a fast and accurate design by using the electrical cabinet of ducts and rails for routin...
How to convert revit to Autocad DWG
Revit 2015 Exporting to AutoCAD DWG. If you want to convert 3D Revit to 3D Autocad DWG, we have a simple and easy process. Open a Revit m...
Best Modeling Services in the Australia
Temporary outsource services for 3D CAD modeling are often required by manufacturing companies, during busy times. In this type of servi...
TIPS for interviewing for a CAD drafter position
Everyone that uses CAD needs a job but how do you know if a potential employer is right for you? It's very difficult to hire the right pe...
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.