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CIBSE Standard Drawing symbols

Many consultancies and contractors have their own symbol library. Often these are similar to one another, but they rarely match exactly.

To provide consistency across the industry, CIBSE’s Society of Digital Engineering has been working in partnership with BuroHappold Engineering, Sweco, Stantec, Laing O’Rourke, MagiCAD and CADAN Design to create a standardised set of drawing symbols that can be applied across the building services sector.

The symbols project is ongoing. Sections currently available are:

  • Systems and abbreviations
  • Heating and cooling
  • Ventilation
  • Small power
  • Lighting and lighting switches
  • Fire safety engineering
  • Fire alarms
  • Pipework accessories

The symbols are free to use for everyone, including any other software or content providers. As it is not possible to create a symbol for all the products that exist within the building services sector, CIBSE has also created the guidance 'Standard symbols - Systems' to detail the process for symbol creation.

CIBSE's Standard Drawing Symbols are available in .jpg and .dxf format. To download the files, simply complete this short form and you'll be taken to a page where you can download these as zip files.

 

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