What is Setting Out?

What does the phrase ‘Setting out’ mean to a builder? What does the job of a Setter out entail?

Here is a quote from from Dictionary.com

113. set out,
a. to begin a journey or course: to set out for home.
b. to undertake; attempt: He set out to prove his point.
c. to design; plan: to set out a pattern.
d. to define; describe: to set out one’s arguments.
e. to plant: to set out petunias and pansies.
f. to lay out (the plan of a building) in actual size at the site.
g. to lay out (a building member or the like) in actual size.

So what does Setting out mean to a builder?

In the Building trade ‘Setting out’ refers to the act of measuring and marking out a full size plan of a building or element of a building on site.

In the joinery shop ‘Setting out’ refers to the act of drawing up the full size shop drawings or ‘Rods’ we create to aid the machinists and joiners on the shop floor with the cutting, machining and fitting of the components of a joinery item.

What are Shop Drawings?

A shop drawing always shows full size sections through machined items and is accompanied by a ‘Cutting ticket’ – a numbered list of the components required to make the joinery item.

The purpose of a shop drawing is to make the manufacturing process more efficient. The machinist should be able to cut all the components from the cutting ticket without referring to the drawing, until it is time to add mouldings to the dressed timber. The drawings should also show the joiner how the components fit together in a clear and concise manner.

Setter out or Setting out?

Drafters in a Joinery workshops’ drawing office are known as ‘Setter’s Out’ or ‘Setting outs’. Occasionally we get accused of being in ‘Design Developmet’.

Apart from providing drawings, Setter Outs may also be required to specify and schedule hardware or ironmongery, bulk order materials and coordinate manufacturing details with subcontractors.

We are often also responsible for document control, making sure that the right people have the right information at the right time.

Setting out & Design development

Setter outs are not ‘Designers’. We aren’t concerned with what an item looks like, only how it’s built. We work closely with the Estimator and our Project Manager and/or QS to make sure that the item being manufactured will come in on time and on budget.

There is a very nice description in ‘Modern Technical drawing’ by George Ellis

What do you think? Have I covered all the bases? It would be great to get your opinion on what a setter out does. You can leave a comment below…