Lowercase letters on drawings
Lowercase letters on drawings
(OP)
After 33 years of preparing and reviewing engineering products for the government, I'm working in the "real world" now. I'm in a "discussion" with our drafters who insist that in the term "440VAC/60Hz/3PH" not only is the little bitty illegible "z" OK, but it is "required." Their arguement is that Y14.38 shows "Hz" for both drawings and text. I said yeah but in 270+ pages of abbreviations it's the only lowercase letter shown for use on drawings except for "rddr" which is pretty obviously a typo. One lowercase letter in one abbreviation of all the abbreviations that the standards committees could dream up. I think that Y14.38's use of "Hz" on drawings is a typo, too.
Do you allow lowercase letters on your engineering drawings? Does anyone know of an addendum to Y14.38 that addresses this particular matter?
Dan Blackwell
Do you allow lowercase letters on your engineering drawings? Does anyone know of an addendum to Y14.38 that addresses this particular matter?
Dan Blackwell





RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
I don't think it's a typo. The correct abbreviation for hertz has always been Hz. Hertz is an SI unit. Systeme International prefers lower case on spelled out and abbreviated units like gram (g), metre (m), etc. You will probably notice capital letters on some units with prefix (e.g. MHz or GHz) or in units named after people like...
hertz (Hz) after Heinrich Hertz
newton (N) after Isaac Newton
pascal (Pa) after Blaise Pascal; etc
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
In 33 years, I've never seen it on an engineering drawing. I've seen HZ and I've seen HERTZ, but never Hz. Y14.2 says lettering on drawings will always be uppercase unless otherwise required. I take that to mean something like a pin in a connector physically labelled with a lowercase letter that you're depicting on a drawing. And even that has other ways it can be designated without actually using a lowercase letter on the drawing.
Look down the column of abbreviations for use on drawings in 14.38. There's one lowercase letter (ignoring rddr) in almost 280 two-column pages of uppercase abbreviations. That one little "z" in one abbreviation is the singular required lowercase letter in ANSI's entire committee-determined-and-approved list. I just don't see 20 or 30 people, who have blessed thousands upon thousands of all caps abbreviations reaching a concensus that there is any one abbreviation so universally used and so confusing if written another way that it should be the sole exception to an otherwise perfectly consistently applied rule--all caps on drawings.
DB
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
In my 13 years of EPCM service for the oil, gas & chemical industries, RARELY did I see the abbreviation "HZ", with a capital zed, to refer to hertz. When I check our own drawings, I always tell our drafters to use the correct abbreviation "Hz". When I check external drawings (e.g. vendor drawings) and see the term "HZ", I just let it go. I know and the vendor knows that it means hertz anyway. There are far too many important stuff to worry about than to nitpick on spelling or capitalization errors.
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Most of us are changing our practices as recommended by many documents. I am a bit nuts regarding abreviations, especially for units. My Engineering in Training Handbook for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam initiated my conversion. My comments apply to keyboard drafting. Further, early keyboards for ASCII symbols were limited to only capital letters - such as teletype. This is no longer the case.
Engineering units for proper names normally begin with a capital letter. This applies to Volts, Amps, Hertz, Fahrenheit, Siemens, etc. The abreviation for multipliers up to kilo use lower case. The larger multipliers beginning with mega use a capital letter. This differentiates m milli from M mega. The unit symbols may be one or more letters. Examples Hz for hertz and mm for millimeters as well as I for current.
Refer to standards such as ANSI, ASME SI-1, ASTM SI 10, NIST 330, NIST 811, ISO, IEEE SI 10, IEEE Std 260.1 etc.
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
I didn't mean to come across as a know-it-all. My apologies. My use of the term "dream up" was meant simply to denote thay had specifically included "Hz" in their document in stark contrast to all other abbreviations.
All,
Y14.2 still says all caps on drawings unless required otherwise. Again, I'm talking strictly about presention of information on an engineering drawing. I felt and still feel that HZ is appropriate for use on drawings.
A good week to all.
Dan
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
In addition to other replies, I'll point out that if one only used caps when writing in unit abbreviations, this can create confusion since some capital letters mean something different than their lowercase counterparts. For example, milliwatts is mW and megawatts is MW. Wikipedia Chart
Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Drafting was an art or craft. My performance reflected my lack of such "craftpersonship". If you look at most drawings you may still find all capital letters. However, I would not expect this to be the case upon the next issue of Y14.2. I see no mention of cases or capitalization in ASHRAE standard 134-2005. Nearly everything is upper case in the symbol descriptions -- except kPa for kilo pascals.
I also notice that the descriptions use PSIG instead of psig. Slap my hand if I type PSIG instead of psig. I am confused regarding volts alternating and direct current. Which is correct, Vac and Vdc or VAC and VDC?
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Yes, lower cases are used, such as kW, kVA and etc.
Yes, most of the drawing is in upper case.
In the end, does it really make a big difference?
"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Fred
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
RE: Lowercase letters on drawings
Regards,
Namdac
P.S. One piece of friendly advice quit trying to read between the lines and just do it.