Understand the organization of a set of blueprints or construction documents, starting with the A0 series and ending with engineering drawings. Learn about the specifics of each series, what they depict, and how they contribute to a complete and detailed depiction of a proposed construction project.
Key Insights
- The A0 series in a set of blueprints typically starts with a cover page and includes regulatory requirements for the project. These documents are often submitted to regulatory agencies for building permits.
- Blueprints are organized in a specific order, with the AS series following the A0 series. The AS series refers to the architectural site plan series, which usually includes large-scale, top-down plan views.
- The blueprint series continues to A1, A2, and A3, and potentially up to A8. These series cover floor plans, exterior views, building sections, detailed plans and images, schedules, interior elevations, and finally, engineering drawings. Each series provides a detailed view or insight into a different aspect of the construction project.
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When we create a set of blueprints or construction documents, there are normally a certain order in which the drawings are presented into the package, because we need to remember that blueprints are submissions to the regulatory agencies, usually for building permits. And so our sheets will typically start off with our A0 series. This might be including a cover page, a sheet index, and then it's followed by regulatory requirements.
These days those requirements can be three, four, five pages long, and more, but it's a whole bunch of notes and checklists for the regulatory agency. So those pages, the A0 series, are typically followed by the AS series. This is the architectural site plan series.
Sometimes the civil engineers drawings are folded into this area. The views in these sets are usually large-scale, top-down plan views. So you can see here we have the outline of the house.
We can see the property line out here, the sidewalks outside of that, the centerline of the road, and then the setbacks. So again, the AS series are architectural site plans. They're usually top-down, large-scale views.
We then have the A1, A2, and A3 series. The images in these series of drawings are typically shown or drawn at the same scale. It might be a quarter inch equals a foot.
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It might be an eighth of an inch. But again, all of these are typically shown at the same scale. The A1 series are plan drawings.
A floor plan drawing is usually a drawing that's cut right around four and a half feet above the ground looking down. So this might include the first floor plan. If you have a basement, the basement plan, a second floor plan, and then the roof plan.
Then we have exteriors. These are again at the same scale. These are vertical views at the outside of the building.
So you'd have the front, the back, the left, the right. And then we have the A3 series again drawn at the same scale as A1 and A2. These are slices through the buildings.
If we need them, we can create an A4 series of documents. These would be larger images. So these might be things like a wall section.
You know, the A3 series has a building section, but we might want to zoom in on certain areas. And that would be called a wall section. And the wall section might be drawn twice as large as the building section, so we can convey more detailed information.
Now we can go on to the A5 series of documents, which is where we zoom in even more. So these are typically plan kinds of images. But you can see like in this drawing right here, this is a door.
And the door has the framing. And so this is just an image that shows how the door and the trim is being put together so that we can have the door look the way we want it to look in the house. So that's the A5 sections.
A6 sections are typically schedules. We might find door and window schedules in the A6 series. Then we have the A7 and A8.
These are typically items like the interior elevations for the kitchens and the bathrooms. And then those are followed by the engineering drawings for structural engineering, mechanical plumbing, and electrical engineering. So this is typically the way a set of blueprints are organized with the general notes, followed by the site plan, the floor plan elevation sections, potentially enlarged sections, then the detail drawings, interior elevations, and then the engineering drawings.
