Large Cutaway Drawing?

Sorry for the long absence from these boards... I went from wasting time when I wasn't in a lab while I was in college, to spending 8+ hours on a computer working a real job, so I don't spend that much time on the interwebs anymore. And I got married.

That being said, my wife has OK'd a large (48"+) black and white technical drawing as the visual centerpiece in our dining room. Obviously I want to take advantage of this, but I can't seem to find a trustworthy place to buy a high-end drawing that's not just a blown-up slightly blurry image.

I'm thinking something like this, but bigger. Any ideas?

Is this real job an engineering firm that creates engineering drawings of various sizes? At my job we have a special printer that is used to print engineering drawings in the actual drawing size. Maybe you borrow your company's quickly if you have a sufficiently high def image file.

Yeah, finding the high-def image is the problem.

And we really don't print anything over 11x17.

Contact the artist or publisher buy one. It'll work best on many, many levels.

I suspect the exemplar was done by Shun Yoshikawa, and K.A.I. is probably the publisher. It doesn't take long to end up at their site, and the California phone number at the top is an excellent starting point.

Is there a particular item you'd want to be the subject if possible? Most cad packages can kick out vector graphics with cutaways like that nowadays if you can make or get your hands on a quality model.

Keith wrote: Contact the artist or publisher buy one. It'll work best on many, many levels. I suspect the exemplar was done by Shun Yoshikawa, and K.A.I. is probably the publisher. It doesn't take long to end up at their site, and the California phone number at the top is an excellent starting point.

Yeah, I contacted KAI about that specific one, but I didn't know if anyone knew of any places that had more options.

Road & Track did a number highly detailed cut a way drawings beginning in the late '60s. They sold prints of them. Maybe still available?

To sure where to point you on this, but congratulations on getting a wife that is ok with this.

I'll have to ask a friend of mine where he got his. He has a large Datsun 510 and an Alfa Romeo GTA in his living room.

EDIT: Just noticed that you can order them through the KAI site, but it looks like 18"x24" is the largest they show to have, and I think that's the size of my friend's prints.

bluej wrote: Is there a particular item you'd want to be the subject if possible? Most cad packages can kick out vector graphics with cutaways like that nowadays if you can make or get your hands on a quality model.

This, but I suspect getting a quality model is a huge problem.

I am now interested in this. I would like one of these in my house, should I ever buy one.

since these are basically just line art can you scan them and then turn the scan into a vector file. which you can then scale to any size you want as long as the printer can handle vector's.

They're more than just line art, there's some pointillism in there for the shading. But I agree, it should be possible to enlarge. Again, the publisher - who has the originals - would probably be in the best position to do this. And I'd encourage finding a method that would reward the artist's work. These drawings aren't something you just bang out on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I'll bet a modern manufacturer could put one together of a modern car - if you've seen the video of the Duratec engine "self-assembling" you know the files are out there. The problem is finding someone who has 1) the files 2) the permission and 3) the time.

Keith wrote: They're more than just line art, there's some pointillism in there for the shading. But I agree, it should be possible to enlarge. Again, the publisher - who has the originals - would probably be in the best position to do this. And I'd encourage finding a method that would reward the artist's work. These drawings aren't something you just bang out on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I'll bet a modern manufacturer could put one together of a modern car - if you've seen the video of the Duratec engine "self-assembling" you know the files are out there. The problem is finding someone who has 1) the files 2) the permission and 3) the time.

I agree on both counts. I would love the files to make a drawing like something above in CAD. I have the skillset, software, and time, just not the content :(

Here's a good place to look for some to purchase, biggest image is 27" though :(

http://www.automotive-stock-images.com/pricing-cutaway.html

For really large images, you can usually use a lower resolution than the typical 300 dpi. It's not typically something you examine up close. A line drawing will scale up better than a more illustrative one, of course.

somewhere out there someone is selling large cutaway drawings like that of the Saturn V rockets that sent our boys to the moon..

Surprise! Turns out we have a Yoshikawa drawing on the wall of the shop! It's not a vector-style line drawing, it really is more art than drafting. I still think it would work well blown up, but it's not something that you can simply grow in a computer.

Here's another option. You can get detailed engineering drawings of things like Garrett turbos in vector PDF format. They'll blow up massively. I used them to do this a few years ago - I think I simplified it, actually.

If you send a link we can print out pretty much anything and ship in a tube . Black and white , color on a paper or canvas suitable for framing .

Google images > input your search criteria > on the left is a menu filter for size > select larger than > use dropdown to pick a large size

this search will give you images larger than 10 megapixels

the image below is 6000x3700 - pretty large

Conquest posted this one here on GRM in the hotlink thread: 4k x 2.5k or so-ish

youre welcome

oooohhhhh 6k x 3k ish I know its not a line drawing, but that would be pretty cool if your a veedub fan

Ecoboost...

Search "Car Blueprint" = jackpot

About resolutions - a lot of commercial printing (posters, etc) is done at about 300 dpi. At the requested 48" across, that means 14,400 pixels across. As I posted earlier, at that size you can get away with lower rez, but even at half that you're looking at over 7000 pixels per side.

These won't be big enough for poster printing but the biggest archive of blueprint type drawings on the internet is - http://www.smcars.net/forums/blueprints/