Research and innovative design of a drawing instrument — A case study of dashed line pen

Abstract

Effective note-taking requires the utilization of dotted lines to distinguish between paragraphs and main points. However, drawing dotted lines can be uneven and irregular, that doesn't meet the aesthetic standards. It's desirable to have a dotted line pen as drawing instrument that can quickly make neat dotted (or dashed) lines and is easy to carry. In addition, there is also a need in mechanical drawing (such as three-view drawings and 3D drawing etc.) that requires straight and accurate dotted lines. Although this can be done manually, the resulting drawings usually won't look professional due to irregular size and thickness variation. Therefore, this study is aim to design and develop an instrument capable of drawing dotted lines, that's also aesthetically appealing and easy to operate. Despite high demand, most of dotted line drawings are still done manually with inconsistent quality. This study adopt TRIZ theory and combines the fields of note-taking and mechanical drawing to develop a dotted line instrument that provides precision, orderliness, aesthetics, quickness and convenience. Not only can this instrument offer improvement over manual strokes but also replace most of sketch drawing pens.