Tech Drawing-Station, Water, and Butt Lines

TDT - Productivity solutions for tech illustrators.

	Station, Water, and Butt Lines have became the accepted practice for designing large curved structures. Station Lines (STA 0.0) run from the front of the structure to the rear and are annotated at structurally significant items such as ribs. Indeed a fundamental part of the system is that if nothing significant happened nothing would be shown. For example if you had a pipe that began at Station 22 and then ran straight to Station 500 without any clamps or bends or holes then you would only find a reference to the start and stop points. Water Lines (WL 0.0) define the height of important points (the floor or ceiling for instance). Butt Lines (BL 0.0) measure left and right of the structure centerline. Right Butt Line 15.00 is 25 inches from Left Butt Line10.00. They are both from the common "0". Butt Lines can also stop and restart. An example would be for the fuselage BL’s to end at the wing root on an aircraft. From that point on Wing Butt Lines (WBL X.X) would take over.
	To create a Station, Water, and Butt Lines grid, change your page setup to Custom, Landscape 30 inches wide and 20 inches high. We will use a scale of 0.24 inch = 12 inches for these tutorials. For the Water Lines set your preferences (Ctrl+J) place duplicates to Horizontal 0.00 and Vertical 0.24. Draw a horizontal line about 0.50 inches long with the straight line pencil (F5) tool. Place an artistic text number 0.00 flush right, to the left and about 10 point centered vertically on the line. Select the line only and duplicate 9 times (10 total lines = 10 feet). Change your preferences (Ctrl+J) to 2.4 inches (0.24 x 10). Marquee select the 10 lines and the number and duplicate 3 times (the aircraft is 285.00 inches high or about 27.75 feet). Edit the text to read 0.00 inches (bottom) then 120.00, then 240.00 then 360.00. Delete the extra lines over 360 inches. Finally use your IsoEval or Isometric Menu to transform the stack to a Front. End the step by grouping the stack.
	The Station Lines will be 774.00 inches long (64.5 feet). Change your preferences (Ctrl+J) place duplicates to Horizontal 0.24 and Vertical 0.00. Draw a vertical line about 0.50 inches high with the straight-line pencil (F5) tool. Place an artistic text number 0.00 centered, to the bottom and about 10 point high centered on the line. Select the line only and duplicate 9 times (10 total lines = 10 feet). Change your preferences to 2.4 inches (0.24 x 10) and duplicate 7 times (the aircraft is 774.00 inches long or about 64.5 feet). Edit the text to read 0.00 (bottom) then 120.00, then 240.00 then 360.00 etc. up to 840.00 inches. Delete the extra lines over 840 inches. Marquee select the row and group (Ctrl+G) them. Since we can also use this row for our Butt lines change your preferences back to 0.00 horizontal and vertical, duplicate the group and move off the page. To properly foreshorten use your IsoEval or Isometric Menu to transform the stack to a Side.

	Start		Back	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10		Next		End	Learn More