To any Pro users not using Release Management...

sebastian_glanzner

john_mcclary said:

You could almost trick them into believing the Drawing tab IS a pdf

@john_mcclary
When I read your response, I had to think about the scene from Back to the Future II, so I created this meme:

owen_sparks

Nice @sebastian_glanzner

Please will you delete the "PDF" though...

Cheers,

Owen S.

sebastian_glanzner

@owen_sparks
You're right, that is much better 

owen_sparks

That's a masterpiece

Owen S.

john_mcclary

Yea, but now it went from reality to fantasy.

Why you gotta be hate'n drawings @owen_sparks ?

owen_sparks

@john_mcclary because it's been the 21st century for some time now.  Any suppliers stuck at the chalkboard stage of engineering need to go out of business and make room for companies that are actually willing to learn new things take a turn

john_mcclary

Yea, because all those fits/tolerances/thread callouts/weld notes/quantity stamps/finish colors/heat treatments/stress relieves/critical bend dimentions/material/stock size notes are just overrated 

owen_sparks

john_mcclary said:

Yea, because all those fits/tolerances/thread callouts/weld notes/quantity stamps/finish colors/heat treatments/stress relieves/critical bend dimentions/material/stock size notes are just overrated 

True, but electronics exist, solid part files exist. There has got to be a drive to tagging faces, edges etc and embedding properties metadata.  How that is extracted later and fed into a quoting / manufacturing process is a debate. 

But just step back and review this:-

A designer works in 3D for an hour then spends a day...

Converting to 2D,

Scribbling notes all over it,

Printing it on a bit of dead tree,

Sending it to Supplier...

...who reverse engineers it back into 3D...

This will look monumentally ridiculous to the next generation.  It's a bit like me sending a fax to my CNC machine instead of GCODE.

Owen S.

john_mcclary

Again, that all sounds fine and dandy.

But that metadata isn't here yet. So, until then that centuries old technology still has fewer limitations when communicating technical information. 

owen_sparks

True, but it isn't going to "just arrive one day". If we want it we need to help build it.

john_mcclary

Agreed, I vote up those IRs when I see em.
just need to calm down those people trying to shoot the horse while it's still running on the track.

owen_sparks

Yeah, I take your point but still (without any disrespect intended) cringe every time IR's are raised for drawings.  Think where we would be if that dev time and intellect was instead pointed at making something better than drawings.  

I fear current OS users will finally be happy with OS drawings the day before they become obsolete and all that effort will be wasted.

If I were a dev I'd be crying into my beer in the evenings

john_mcclary

Onshape won't change the fate of drawings. You will have to wait for all the grumpy old men running industry to die off.

There is no plausible way I could convince General Motors to log into Onshape and review. Their I.T. has their computers so locked down they can't even use a usb thumb drive. We even have to send zip files as .piz to get past email filters. I don't see that changing for at least 20+ years

billy2

pdf/dwg/step offsite storage is something Joe & I have been talking about since day one of OS. As time progresses, I'm seeing this as something that's more important. 

I'd like to pick your brains as to what's available and determine how much pain you're willing to endure.

The back story:
OS is a cloud application.
The cloud is servers talking to servers.
It's not your intranet that's based in the world of file manipulation ie.. solidworks .
It's easy enough to ask OS for these files and it works today but are you ready?
Where will they go? Do you have a server?

I'm not trying to be an ass here, but there are some technicals things that you'll have to figure out.

Some facts:
You say you'll just use your website server, bad idea, these are usually shared environments and they just won't work.
Your web developer has no idea how to talk to onshape's servers.
For onshape to send the data to your server, this has to be setup, this isn't their business and it's a pain.
If you want someone to do this for you, you have to give them rights to your data.

Basically to do this, you have to spin up and maintain a server. It's not that hard to do and could be a valuable lesson in computing. I'm not trying to rain on your parade, the technology exists today, but are you really ready?

billy2

In the time for me to type saving pdf/dwg/step, you guys came up with the solution.

Just share the documents with machine shops and let's stop creating drawings! No need to store them.

john_mcclary

Well, we do if we want to get paid...

all criteria and layers / line types etc. have to go through a home made scanner they created and they will not give final payment until the drawings are in their system.

So the more work I need to do in draftsight, the longer it will take at the end of the project. Technically the final drawings are to be submitted before the machine lands on the loading dock. But there is so much conversion (even from Solidworks Drawings abilities) that we are usually a few weeks / month late on final. 

So yea, let's not get too excited about killing drawings, unless you plan on loosing customers 

here is just one page of a 2" thick specifications book from GM

billy2

@john_mcclary their system? Is this FTP? Would you create a folder with the date and dump files in there?

Just wondering how you get into their system?

john_mcclary

we ftp their files, someone on their end actually imports them into their system. It's kind of a drawing repository that any maintenance worker can search a 2D drawing based of any information in any title block field. Not really sure on the technical, but all I know is it is a very picky system and sometimes takes 2 or three times before it accepts. (this all started after GM got bailed out around 2008) before that, the drawing just needed to be the right colors. Now layer control is critical, because they have a layer for English, French, Spanish and the system will hide show layers depending on the user pulling the drawing etc. It's overkill, some companies outsource this conversion apparently because it's so stupid.

owen_sparks

@john_mcclary, ouch I feel your pain there, I can't imagine having to deal with that day in day out.

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum, I am the customer and I want to get my parts quoted for and manufactured as easily as possible.  A bit like @billy2 's velocity stacks builder but a step further.  I want to, as far as possible, remove the human from the chain at all.  I want at worst to send electronic data to a vendor, but mostly I want my data to play nicely with their API / website / application.  I want sending CAD to a supplier to be like sending a file to printer.

If I have two potential suppliers, one whereby I can right click on a part in OS, select "Quote for this", enter a qty & acceptable lead time, and another supplier that wants me to create dxf drawings, and engage in weeks of email chain quotes then which is going to win?

Sure this is all somewhat hypothetical.  We're at the stage of our purchasing dept negotiating real contracts for high volume parts, but for smaller stuff, come on, the time is now...  Some machine shops already allow you to drag and drop files onto their site for real time quotes.  It's time for real industry to step up too.

Or we can carry on using crayons.

Owen S.

john_mcclary

Hey, someone has to lead the way. Just hope it bleeds into the big 3's specs one of these days.

billy2

Thanks, ftp would be easy.

I suppose understanding the structure would take a little bit of effort. If you can do it by hand and get it right, you could automate it.

Me, I'd open up 40 connections and have it done in seconds, that is, if their server didn't heat up and melt.

My point, this is doable, you're still responsible for getting drawing formats correct, but submission, could be fast.

3dcad

+1 for developing MBD instead of drawings

3dcad

Onshape should take a stab at MBD so that it would also serve people creating drawings. Define everything in 3D, get annotated drawings with a single click. And when the world is ready, stop clicking.

https://www.designnews.com/alternative-energy/argument-against-model-based-definition/168376069946371 - nice article

john_mcclary

That would be nice to see an Onshape MBD someday. But at the end of the day, I still need clean exportable drawings

billy2

I'm with you guys. I hate doing drawings, but, have no problems adding info to model for manufacture.

Companies that are doing it, love it, just don't know why we can't change and all move forward.

3dcad

john_mcclary said:

That would be nice to see an Onshape MBD someday. But at the end of the day, I still need clean exportable drawings

You and many others. That's why they should link these two, create in 3d - have same added info in drawings automatically. Otherwise people won't start using MBD since they need those drawings for another decade or so..

brucebartlett

On MBD the standards have been around for decades, in some industries like machine shops, I think it works quite well but I don't think it works everywhere and there are still gaps where paper drawings are just more convenient than a screen/tablet/phone. I am sure if there was a real economic benefit to MBD it would have taken off more than it has. 

philip_thomas

Just for some perspective from this side, and this is just my OPINION - while MDB is a holy-grail of design (design once, no drawings), the challenges are primarily twofold. Where a company does its own manufacturing, MBD is far easier to implement. People can be trained on the correct processes and the integration with NC generation is much easier (because the MBD annotations follow company standards). Where a company outsources manufacturing (as is the case for most companies), it's much harder to define process (machine shops have their own standards/workflows) and few machinists can actually read GD&T. Moreover, the lingua franca is usually the lowest common denominator of DXF/DWG. The last problem (a compatible viewer), is largely solved by Onshape today.
Do we want to do MBD? Yes. Are we going to do it? Yes. 
As you know, our community (you) helps shape what we put out. Noodle on this (just like you're doing here - we all read it), and see if you can boil it down to its essence - "It would need to do these 3 things to be viable" - that would be very helpful

3dcad

My 3 things:
- Dimensioning
- Hole callouts with x,y location (also for cylinder cutouts)
- Annotations & description

MBD would be just perfect as you could easily use additional sketches to make things clear. One issue to solve is how to divide multipart studio into nice part by part view. I think it should have some UI helper where single part is isolated (like in-context edit) and you could use named views to set 'front-view'. 

Is there anyone using SW MBD? Is that any good?

konstantin_shiriazdanov

3dcad said:

One issue to solve is how to divide multipart studio into nice part by part view. I think it should have some UI helper where single part is isolated (like in-context edit) and you could use named views to set 'front-view'. 

I think for MBD there would be needed a separate invironmet, not a part studio. But before they add some new representation to the part would be good to be able to find what representations associated to the part already exist - what geometry, drawings, assemblies, simulations, renders, BOMs are describing particular physical object - the part.