What is the diameter sign and how to find it on the keyboard?

Beginning in the second half of the 18th century in England, the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century swept across many countries of Europe and the world. It was characterized by rapid development of technology and industrial production. Manufacture of products moved from manufactories and workshops to large factories and plants. However, the transition from individual and small-scale production to mass production, as well as the division of labor, required the creation of a variety of design and technological documentation, which led to the development of applied discipline - drafting.

The emergence of standardization

Drawing allows you to create a graphic image of the object, necessary for its production. However, for the production of a single appearance the product is small. The drawing also contains dimensions, scale, technical requirements, material and other characteristics of the part. The further development of production led to the division of labor, when components are manufactured at different enterprises, and then assembly of the finished product is carried out. This required unification and standardization of parts and a single rule for the execution of drawings. For convenience of recording and perception of technical information, conventional symbols were introduced, such as, for example, a sign of diameter or thickness, facilitating the recording of the indicated characteristics.

Legend: diameter sign

The standards provide for various conventions that allow recording the geometric and technological parameters of the depicted object: signs of radius, thickness, angle, tolerance and processing allowance. The same diameter applies to them, which determine the dimensions of the holes and bodies of revolution. The chord that connects two points on a circle (ball) and passing through its (its) center, is called the diameter. How is it indicated in the drawings? The diameter sign is a circle crossed by a line tilted at 45 ^° to the vertical in the clockwise direction. In some cases, a Latin letter D is used, which is allowed to be used on a par with the main character.

Diameter sign in Word

With the development of computer technology, most of the design documentation has been translated into an electronic form, which facilitates the creation, storage, transfer and replication of drawings and process maps. Special programs are used for this. For example, AutoCAD is used to build drawings, and for Word documents, Word is included in the Microsoft Office suite. Along with paid software, there is also a free: NanoCAD, Open Office.

Accordingly, in these programs, the symbols, including the diameter sign, migrated. It does not exist on the standard keyboard layout, therefore, to insert it into a document created using the text editor Word, you need to go through the following way: "Insert → Symbol → Other Symbols → switch" Font "to" Symbol "→ Æ». The code for the diameter sign in the "Character (hex)" is 00C6. Since this element is not present in all fonts, it can be replaced with a crossed out "o": "Ø", the code is 00D8 in "Unicode (16)".