Earth
Marks earth (soil) in a section drawing.
Easily confused with
How to read it
Earth is one of the material conventions in the Army's print-reading manual, which picks each pattern to suggest the material where it can. The Navy's Builder Basic course shows earth among its conventional material symbols, next to rock, sand and water.
Also searched as: grade, ground symbol, soil hatch.
This explains what a symbol represents on a drawing. Conventions vary between firms and standards, and a drawing's own legend takes precedence.
Look-alikes
The concrete pattern is dots and small triangles inside an outline.
Read next
- Next in Blueprint symbolsDoor swingA hinged door, drawn with the arc it sweeps as it opens.
- The same shape in Weather map symbolsOccluded front symbolAn occluded front: the front that forms where a cold front has caught up with a warm front. It is drawn as a purple line with triangles and half circles, alternating, on the same side.
More blueprint symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with lines.
Sources
- Construction Print Reading in the Field, TM 5-704 / AFM 85-27, Departments of the Army and the Air Force, para. 2-2b; fig. 2-2
- Builder Basic, NAVEDTRA 14043A, Naval Education and Training Command, U.S. Navy, ch. 3, fig. 3-10
- Reading Architects' Blueprints, William S. Lowndes, 1922, International Textbook Company, Scranton (Internet Archive), §5, art. 48
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 24, 2026. How we research
Added .