Drawing your idea clearly
Design & Technology · Key Stage 2 · The School
A drawing plus its notes
A design sketch on its own leaves everything to be guessed. ANNOTATION is what turns it into an instruction: materials, sizes, how parts join, why a choice was made. Arrows to the part being described, short phrases, real measurements. The test is simple — could someone build this without asking you a single question?
Cutting it open
A CROSS-SECTION is the view you would get if you sliced straight through the product and looked at the cut face. It is the only way to show what is inside: thickness of walls, what is hollow, where a layer sits. Many products are impossible to describe from the outside, and a cross-section takes seconds compared with a paragraph of explanation.
Pulling it apart
An EXPLODED DIAGRAM draws every part separated along the lines it fits together, as if it had been pulled gently apart and frozen. It shows how many parts there are, their order, and which way round each goes. This is why flat-pack instructions use them, and why a repair manual is nearly all exploded views.
DRAWING A: a beautiful shaded picture of a wooden box. DRAWING B: a rough sketch with 200 mm along the front, 150 mm deep, 100 mm high, an arrow to the lid saying '3 mm ply, hinged at the back', another saying 'glued and pinned corners', and a note 'sanded and varnished'. Hand both to someone and ask them to build it. Only B is a design drawing.