The Shaft Runs the Whole Way
An exploded product view on white — parts strung along one axis in assembly order, with anything that passes through drawn long enough to reach everything it passes through. Five fields.
Two runs of the same template. The better of the two. The threaded tie rod spans every part and terminates exactly where the field said it threads in, at the foot plate - no overshoot. This run also drew the dashed centreline the template asks for, visible above the hanging ring and below the base, which the first run left to the shaft itself to imply. Assembly order, grouping and the two wide sub-assembly breaks all came through as given.
The shaft is now one continuous rod running from the crank arm down through eleven components, where the reference run of this style drew it as a short stub near the top that simply ended, leaving nothing above the burrs connected to anything below them. One honest over-correction: the field said the shaft seats in the lower bearing plate, and this run carries it on past that and down into the glass jar. Too long is a better failure than too short, and it is still not the true length.
Generated for this library
Input
Product a hand coffee grinder - brushed steel, matt black
polymer, a walnut crank knob
Parts crank knob · crank arm · adjustment dial · upper
bearing · top housing · conical burr · ring burr ·
burr carrier · body tube · lower bearing plate ·
grounds chute · base collar · glass catch jar
Through the drive shaft runs from the crank arm at the top
down through the dial, upper bearing, top housing,
both burrs and the carrier, ending at the lower
bearing plate - one continuous rod, true length
Grouping the two burrs and their carrier close as one group
· wide gap above the body tube · another above the
catch jar
Render studio render on plain white, soft top-left key
Returned 1 board · 2:5 · white, photographic
axis one vertical centreline through every bore
shaft drawn as a single rod spanning eleven parts, its
lower end reaching the bearing plate it seats in
order reading down the column is the order you would
assemble it in
gaps tight inside the burr group, wide at the two
sub-assembly breaks
ground plain white, no shadow, no reflection, no floorYou fill in 5 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The product
- 2The parts, top to bottom, in assembly order
- 3What passes through what
- 4The grouping — what sits close, what gets a gap
- 5The rendering
The Shaft Runs the Whole Way
Produce ONE image, 2:5 tall portrait: an exploded view of a product on plain white. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the fields?
If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.
If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these five lines only
- The product: {what it is, and its materials}
- The parts, top to bottom, in assembly order: {every part, in order}
- What passes through what: {each through-part, where it starts, where it ends}
- The grouping — what sits close, what gets a gap: {which parts cluster, where the breaks are}
- The rendering: {a render style, and a light}
The through-part law
An exploded view is a promise that the thing goes back together. The single detail that keeps that promise is the part that runs through the others.
Every through-part is drawn at its true length, spanning every component the fields say it passes through, and reaching the part it finally seats in.
A reference run of this style produced a superb column of grinder components — burrs, bearings, housings, a glass jar, all beautifully rendered — and drew the drive shaft as a short stub near the top that simply ended. Nothing above the burrs was connected to anything below them. The picture showed a set of objects arranged vertically, not a machine taken apart.
Follow each through-part from end to end. If it stops in mid-air before the last thing it passes through, it is wrong. Lengthen the rod; do not shorten the explosion.
Long screws and bolts follow the same rule: a screw shown beside the holes it enters is drawn long enough to reach them.
The axis law
There is one vertical assembly axis, and everything sits on it.
- A thin centreline runs the full height of the image, passing through the bore or centre of every part.
- Every part is centred on that line, however wide or narrow it is.
- Parts that genuinely sit off-axis in the real product — a crank arm reaching sideways, a lever, a spout — attach to something that is on the axis, and their offset is the real one.
Without the centreline you cannot tell what threads onto what, and the column becomes a stack rather than an assembly.
Order
Reading down the column is the order you would assemble it in, as the fields give it. No part is moved for looks. A part that fits inside another sits directly above or below it, never several places away.
Spacing
Gaps carry meaning:
- Tight between parts of one sub-assembly — a bearing and its seat, two burrs and their carrier.
- Wide at the breaks between sub-assemblies, where the fields say.
- Never uniform throughout. Even spacing tells a reader that no two parts are more related than any other two, which is never true.
Rendering
- Photographic studio render: real materials, soft top-left key, gentle fill, crisp edges.
- Plain white ground, no gradient, no floor, no reflection, no cast shadow beneath the parts. The parts carry their own shading only.
- Each part shown at the same viewing angle — a slight three-quarter from very slightly above, consistent for every component.
- Materials as the fields describe them, and different parts in different materials read as different materials.
Never
- ✕ a through-part drawn shorter than the span it passes through
- ✕ a shaft, rod or screw ending in mid-air
- ✕ no centreline, or parts not centred on it
- ✕ parts out of assembly order
- ✕ uniform spacing throughout
- ✕ a background, floor, gradient, shadow or reflection
- ✕ parts drawn at differing viewing angles
- ✕ callout numbers, leader lines, labels or text of any kind
- ✕ parts the fields did not list
The result
A machine taken apart and held in the air: one line through every bore, the shaft long enough to reach the last thing it turns, and gaps that tell you which pieces belong to each other.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the five FIELDS lines. In the third, say where each through-part starts and where it ends — the length is the thing that gets lost.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the view.
- Follow the shaft with a finger before shipping. If it stops before the last part it drives, the assembly does not close.
What you swap
- The product
- a hand coffee grinder — brushed steel, matt black polymer, a walnut crank knob
- The parts, top to bottom, in assembly order
- crank knob · crank arm · adjustment dial · upper bearing · top housing · conical burr · ring burr · burr carrier · body tube · lower bearing plate · grounds chute · base collar · glass catch jar
- What passes through what
- the drive shaft runs from the crank arm at the top all the way down through the dial, the upper bearing, the top housing, both burrs and the carrier, ending at the lower bearing plate — drawn as one continuous rod at its true length
- The grouping — what sits close, what gets a gap
- the two burrs and their carrier sit close as one group · a wide gap above the body tube · another wide gap above the catch jar
- The rendering
- photographic studio render on plain white, soft top-left key, no background, no shadows on the ground
Before it runs
- Parts you can name in order. The column is the assembly sequence, so a list you cannot sequence produces a pile stacked vertically.
- At least one through-part. The shaft or the long screws are what prove the column is an assembly rather than a shelf.
- A product with real internals. Something with three parts has nothing to explode; the format needs eight or more.
When to reach for it
Product pages, patent-style explainers, teardown features, engineering portfolios. Templates in this style return a beautiful column of components and a drive shaft drawn as a short stub, so nothing above is connected to anything below and the thing could never be put back together.
What changes
- One column of components on white, spaced along a single vertical assembly axis.
- A thin centreline running through every part's bore, so the order of assembly is readable.
- Through-parts — shafts, rods, long screws — drawn at full length, spanning everything they pass through.
- Gaps that mean something: tight between parts of one sub-assembly, wide between sub-assemblies.
- Parts in true assembly order, so reading down the column is the sequence you would follow.
Pairs with
- Every Finger Gets a LineAn industrial-design interaction study — hands operating one product, drawn in pen line — sized and separated so the hands survive being the subject. Six fields.
- Every Tool Gets UsedA single-page repair or maintenance sheet in pen line — device, exploded detail, tools, numbered steps — held to the consistency check these sheets quietly fail. Six fields.
- One Object, Two StatesAn industrial-design sheet for a translucent ribbed product, shown closed and open — with the two views held to being the same object and the size stated on the page. Six fields.