Although CAD programs have partially made some of their usage obsolete, they are still available almost anywhere, with the rarer types found at drafting and graphic arts suppliers. In previous years these were standard time saving equipment for graphical work. Several types have been offered over the years for layout design. Their major limitations are fixed scale and lack of flexibility in symbols available such as radii, turnout numbers and varieties etc. Most of the canned CAD programs fall short in similar areas by over stressing beauty instead of form and utility. However if you lack a good CAD program templates can still prove useful, at least for quick doodles of rough ideas. Most of the items shown were from pre-CAD days and provided much useful service.
Basic ones include circles, ellipses , triangles, rectangles and other geometric shapes.
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Top: General type sold with school supplies including protractor and French curve.
Bottom: Different shapes and sizes.
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Left.: Measures large circles. Draws with holes similar to compass.
Right: Large arc template.
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Various ellipse sizes and angles.
Since ellipses are projections of circles rotated around a diametrical axis at various angles, they are listed by angle. These are very useful for drawing wheels and other round objects in perspective and other 3 dimensional views.
Rarer forms such as French and ship builder's curves provide continuous arcs with changing radii based on parabolae, hyperbolae, and different spirals, similar to easements.
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Box art to show various types included in set.
Many specialized types are available from plumbing and duct work to electronic symbols.
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1/2 size MIL SPEC 806C logic symbols.
This and several others proved so useful in my design work, that I had reduced 3/8 and 1/4 size copies made in our machine shop for smaller drawings.
Many lettering guides are available from large stencils to small drafting text sizes. Some have edge risers to clear paper for ink work.
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Extensively used for lettering before computer fonts.
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Adjustable line drawing guide. Rotating disk changes spacing.
Various modelrailroad specific guides have been around for many years.
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A Kurtz Kraft partial NMRA gauge copy with scale, frog angles and trolly (sic) wire locater. Not very accurate, but better than nothing.
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Pre-plastic, card stock layout template.
If you ever found a bargain item and wondered if it were to your scale, but had no way to check. The Scale Card is a credit card sized measuring instrument and see-through template which has a scale rule, man, woman and child figure plus a diameter gauge. These come in almost every scale.
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SCALE CARD
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