Glossary
CAD Drafter Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential CAD drafter terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key CAD drafter vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in CAD drafter training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- BIM
- Building information modeling.
- CAD
- Computer-aided design.
- Contour
- A line of equal elevation.
- Detail
- An enlarged drawing.
- Drawing set
- A complete group of drawings.
- Elevation
- A side view.
- Grading plan
- Shows land shape.
- Layer
- A drawing level for organizing.
- Plan view
- A top-down view.
- Redline
- Markup with corrections.
- Revision cloud
- Marks changes.
- Scale
- Drawing size ratio.
- Section
- A cut-through view.
- Title block
- Drawing information box.
- Xref
- An external reference drawing.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free CAD Drafter practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see CAD Drafter training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.