A cutaway drawing, also called a cutaway diagram is a 3D graphics, drawing

Technical drawing

Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....

, diagram

Diagram

A diagram is a two-dimensional geometric symbolic representation of information according to some visualization technique. Sometimes, the technique uses a three-dimensional visualization which is then projected onto the two-dimensional surface...

 and or illustration

Technical illustration

Technical Illustration is the use of illustration to visually communicate information of a technical nature. Technical illustrations can be components of technical drawings or diagrams...

, in which surface

Surface

In mathematics, specifically in topology, a surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The most familiar examples are those that arise as the boundaries of solid objects in ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 — for example, the surface of a ball...

 elements a three-dimensional model are selectively removed, to make internal features visible, but without sacrificing the outer context entirely.

Overview

According to Diepstraten et al. (2003) "the purpose of a cutaway drawing is to allow the viewer to have a look into an otherwise solid opaque object. Instead of letting the inner object shine through the surrounding surface, parts of outside object are simply removed. This produces a visual appearance as if someone had cutout a piece of the object or sliced it into parts. Cutaway illustrations avoid ambiguities with respect to spatial ordering, provide a sharp contrast between foreground and background objects, and facilitate a good understanding of spatial ordering".

Though cutaway drawing are not dimensioned manufacturing blueprint

Blueprint

A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....

s, they are meticulously drawn by a handful of devoted artists who either had access to manufacturing details or deduced them by observing the visible evidence of the hidden skeleton (e.g. rivet lines, etc.). The goal of this drawings in studies can be to identify common design patterns for particular vehicle classes. Thus, the accuracy of most of these drawings, while not 100 percent, is certainly high enough for this purpose.

The technique is used extensively in computer-aided design

Computer-aided design

Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...

, see first image. It has also been incorporated into the user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 of some video games. In The Sims

The Sims

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...

, for instance, users can select through a control panel whether to view the house they are building with no walls, cutaway walls, or full walls.

History

The cutaway view and the exploded view

Exploded view

An exploded view drawing is a diagram, picture or technical drawing of an object, that shows the relationship or order of assembly of various parts....

 were minor graphic inventions of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 that also clarified pictorial representation. This cutaway view originates in the early fifteenth century notebooks of Marino Taccola

Taccola

Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola , called Taccola , was an Italian administrator, artist and engineer of the early Renaissance. Taccola is known for his technological treatises De ingeneis and De machinis, which feature annotated drawings of a wide array of innovative machines and devices...

 (1382 – 1453). In the 16th century cutaway views in definite form were used in Georgius Agricola's (1494-1555) mining book De Re Metallica

De re metallica

De re metallica is a book cataloguing the state of the art of mining, refining, and smelting metals, published in 1556. The author was Georg Bauer, whose pen name was the Latinized Georgius Agricola...

to illustrate underground operations. The 1556 book is a complete and systematic treatise on mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 and extractive metallurgy, illustrated with many fine and interesting woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s which illustrate every conceivable process to extract ores from the ground and metal from the ore, and more besides. It shows the many watermill

Watermill

A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...

s used in mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

, such as the machine for lifting men and material into and out of a mine shaft, see image.

The term "Cutaway drawing" was already in use in the 19th century but, became popular in the 1930s.

Technique

The location and shape to cut the outside object depends on many different factors, for example:

• the sizes and shapes of the inside and outside objects,
• the semantics of the objects,
• personal taste, etc.

These factors, according to Diepstraten et al. (2003), "can seldon be formalized in a simple algorithm, But the properties of cutaway can be distinguish in two classes of cutaways of a drawing":

• cutout : illustrations were the cutaway is retricted to very simple and regularly shaped of often only a small number of planar slices into the outside object.
• breakaway : a cutaway realized by a single hole in the outside object.

Examples

Some more examples of cutaway drawings, from products and systems to architectural building.

See also

Similar types of technical drawings

• Cross-section
  Cross section (geometry)
  In geometry, a cross-section is the intersection of a figure in 2-dimensional space with a line, or of a body in 3-dimensional space with a plane, etc...
  
  
• Exploded view drawing
• Perspective
  Perspective (graphical)
  Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...