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.
Raster Image Formats in CAD
It adds many 3D CAD file formats for storing and transmitting data. CAD file formats are classified in terms of two distinct forms. It of...
Mobile CAD Computing
When the PC (Personal Computer) was introduced in the late 1970s to early 1980s, the computing world witnessed progressive miniaturizatio...
Virtual Prototyping Reality?
Lot of manufacturing organizations support reducing TTM (Time to Market). It helps to optimize product designs to maximize reality and ge...
Driverless Car Cad Design
If you think the idea of having driverless cars on the roads seems dangerous and utopian, think again, because the idea is quickly becomi...
Wearable Medical Devices CAD Design
The majority of people born before the 1900 year haven't lived past 50 years of age. In the 20th century, life expectancy increased drama...
CAD Innovations in Rapid Prototyping
Rapid Prototyping offer advanced ability to design and fabricate models. Along with using proof-of-principle prototypes. Wherea...
Architect developed a stunning 3D printing models
The architect developed a stunning 3D printing models We have seen examples that prove that CAD design would be combined with 3...
Best 3D print use for beer
3D print for using beer - Design and Drafting Service When talking about 3D print, they are not just the machines progressing and ev...
Types of CAD Conversions
Different Kinds of CAD Conversion To bring your product to life, you must convert your plans, diagrams, sketches and other files into CAD...
Cost Effective SketchUp Services
If you have not yet used SketchUp for your business, then it's time you used the software and reaped the benefits that it offers. With it...
Best 3D printing house to build in 20 hours!
3D printing technology uses the latest "ultra-cool" movement. Ever since we heard about 3D printing, we remember the small 3D p...
The world’s largest 3D printer
3D Printer has made things possible where the sky is just the limit. The 3D Printer is now capable of printing objects as long as 100 fee...
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.