From the 1500s, sets of drawing instruments were provided in portable boxes. The larger and more comprehensive sets in plush lined hardwood inlay boxes with brass medallions are more valuable and collectable. Metal instruments in old drawing sets are made mostly of brass and steel, occasionally silver. After 1850 some were made of German silver or nickel silver (alloy of copper, zinc and nickel) and by 1900 mostly electrum (nickel and copper). Pocket sets from the 1700s and early 1800s are small round to flat canisters often elegantly made in silver, shagreen, shark skin or tortoise shell.

A rule is a basic straight edge for drawing straight lines or if a French curve, for drawing curved lines. Square sets allow a predetermined angle to be drawn. Scales are rules with a graduated scale along the edge so a line of predetermined length can be drawn or a line distance measured. Parallel rules are composed of two separate rules with pivoting hinges for drawing parallel lines, and rolling rules have cylindrical rollers inserted through them so the rule can be rolled to maintain parallel lines.

Dividers and compasses are two-pencil like pointers with sharp points connected by a central pivot joint. Usually made of steel, brass, nickel-brass or silver, they may be ornately engraved. They range in length from about 2 inches to 12. Dividers are used to repeat distances along a scale or measure at set increments on a drawing or map. Compasses are identical to dividers in basic design but since at least the 1300s one point could be used for scoring or for drawing an arc or circle. Compasses come in different designs primarily to accommodate different size circles. They include wing-compasses , screw-compasses, bow compasses, spring bow compasses, beam-compasses, which are two separate attachments devised by Leonardo da Vinci around 1492 to draw unusually large circles, pillar compasses, turn-about compass, and the pump-compass, which is a small pencil-like tube for drawing pinhead sized circles. As a drafting tool the sector provides results graphically and must be accompanied by a divider. The planimeter is a mechanical drafting and engineering tool that measures the area bounded by a closed curve. It consists of a rotating disc linked to a tracer that rolls against a cone to measure the area swept by the tracer.

Devices that project images can be used for copying and enlarging. The earliest known instrument like this is the camera obscura or pin-hole camera, crude forms of which have been around since the fifth century. The camera obscura, predecessor to the photographic camera, is a box with a hole in one side, through which an inverted image of an outside scene is naturally projected onto the opposite side, or in the case of a dark room or tent onto the opposite wall. They were refined during the 1600s to include a converging lens. The camera lucida was patented in 1806 by William Wollaston for drawing copies or reductions from an original. A prism reflects the image of a distant scene or subject onto a sheet of paper below the prism over which the user can place a transparency and copy the image. The camera lucida was popular with artists throughout the nineteenth century and lived on throughout the twentieth century in some drawing, drafting and photogrammetric labs.

The proportional compass, is the earliest and simplest version of reducing and enlarging instruments. They have two pointed arms like dividers, and operate line by line. The more complex and much larger pantograph was invented about 1603 by Christoph Scheiner. It is a large drawing apparatus typically about a meter long with four pivoting arms. The arms are hinged and articulated such that one pen draws a larger version of the other. The ediograph is an 1821 improvement over the pantograph that incorporates three arms with cables and pulleys. The protractor is a flat circular arc graduated in 360-degree marks or more commonly a semi-circular arc graduated in 180° that is used to measure and draw angles. Square sets are usually flat straight edged triangles with one right angle in combination with either two 45° angles or 30° and 60° angles.