Glossary
Mechanical Drafter Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential mechanical drafter terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key mechanical drafter vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in mechanical drafter training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Assembly
- Combined parts.
- BOM
- Bill of materials.
- Datum
- Reference feature.
- ECO
- Engineering change order.
- GD&T
- Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing.
- Isometric
- 3D view.
- Layer
- Group of drawing items.
- Markup
- Engineer’s corrections.
- PDM
- Product data management.
- Revision
- Drawing change.
- Scale
- Drawing size ratio.
- Section view
- Cut-through view.
- Sheet metal
- Formed metal parts.
- Title block
- Drawing info box.
- Tolerance
- Allowed variation.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Mechanical Drafter practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Mechanical Drafter training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.