Photographs, reference illustrations and engineering drawings
Three kinds of picture turn up in a valve enquiry. They establish completely different things, and treating one as another is how wrong parts get ordered.
Ask a supplier for "a drawing" and you may get any of three things, each of which answers a different question. Knowing which one you are holding matters, because the thing people most often do with the wrong one is take a dimension off it.
Three different documents
- A product photographEstablishes what the item looks like: its general form, where the connections are, what is cast into the body if the resolution allows. It establishes no dimension at all. A photograph has perspective and an unknown scale.
- A reference illustrationA line drawing made to show the arrangement of a product clearly - which part is where, what the outline is, where a dimension would be measured. It is a communication aid. Unless it carries confirmed measured values it establishes no dimension either.
- An engineering drawingA controlled document produced by the manufacturer, carrying dimensions, tolerances, a revision and a title block. This is the only one of the three you can build to.
What ANYI publishes, and what it is not
ANYI publishes the first two. Model pages carry real photographs, and some carry a block headed Technical Illustration with a line drawing under it and a note saying it is a reference illustration based on product photographs and not to scale. Those illustrations may carry letters where a dimension would go - H, W, D - and those letters mark a POSITION, not a value. No millimetre figure is written in beside them until the factory has confirmed one.
That is deliberate, and it is worth saying plainly: an illustration on our site is not a factory engineering drawing, is not a DWG, and is not a verified dimensional drawing. If your work needs one of those, ask for it as its own request and we will tell you what can be provided for that exact model.
Common questions
Can I scale a dimension off a reference illustration?
No. It is not drawn to scale and it carries no tolerance. A figure scaled off one is a guess with a decimal point on it.
The illustration shows a feature my photograph does not. Which is right?
Ask. An illustration is drawn from photographs, so a feature that is not visible in the photographs should not be in it - if you spot a discrepancy, that is worth reporting and we will check it.
Can I use a photograph to confirm a connection?
It can confirm which end a connection is on and sometimes what is cast beside it. It cannot confirm a thread form or a size. Those come from the record.
Name the exact model and say what the drawing is for. We will tell you what the factory can provide rather than sending an illustration instead.