what are drawings for?

noah_saxenian

Hi, I'm new to onshape and I'm wondering what drawings are for. Are they for planning your design or for documenting it or what?
Thanks  

Mitch_Pricer

Drawings are meant for sending detailed reports of your design on to the shop team for manufacturing. Such as adding call-outs for something that has a specific type of threading that needs to be machined onto it, ect. They can be used for the actions you listed, but it is not their primary job. 

shashank_aarya

Drawings are mainly used for conveying the detailed manufacturing information to the shop people in such a way that everyone can easily understand. It contains every information such as dimensions, tolerance requirement, machining process, surface finish etc. in most simple manner which otherwise is very difficult to convey it without drawing.

3dcad

Drawings are the standard way of printing the desing. There are global rules how information is expressed so that everybody speaks same language. They unite people who desing with 2d, 3d or even by pen&paper.

This is why we still need them though 3d representations can be a great help.

Probably within few generations 3d/4d models will replace the need for drawings, currently I don't see anyone even trying to come up with 3d model containing enough information for industrial manufacturing. 

matthew_menard

3dcad said:
...

Probably within few generations 3d/4d models will replace the need for drawings, currently I don't see anyone even trying to come up with 3d model containing enough information for industrial manufacturing. 

Pretty sure the ASME Y14.41 standard covers 3d representation of models.  There may also be an ISO standard, but it is unfamiliar to me.

Solidworks keeps spamming me emails about their Model Based Definition (MBD) package, even though the place I work will adopt it about a decade after the rest of the world does.  It looks promising, but I see a lot of hand wringing about ditching drawings before it becomes an industry standard.  I'm actually a little surprised there isn't an MBD plugin in the OnShape App Store.  Here's a few links for anybody interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-based_definition
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/technical-communication/solidworks-mbd.htm
http://www.capvidia.com/capvidia-products/mbdvidia-ptc-creo-qif-metrology
http://www.advanceddimensionalmanagement.com/pmi-mbd-3d-gdt-digital-data-3d-solid-models-as-design-deliverables/#limited_dimension_drawing

I'm not associated with any of these sites, but they all give a few example images of models with MBD annotations for anybody who hasn't seen them.  It will be interesting to see how this technology gets worked into the design process of the future. 

3dcad

@matthew_menard
Thanks for the links to prove my point. MBD / PMI is in early stage and it needs loads of development to compete with even say 10mm pile of A4 sheets. I'm glad they create nice videos of simple bracket having information all over - everything needs to begin with something..

Step ap 242 sounds interesting, but files will probably not define the future. Something like Onshape + Google + Apple working together might be able to come up with a solution of true drawings replacement.
It needs to be something familiar, something hyper innovative, working with any device and stay as far from pdfs as possible

Maybe we need to start discussion on 'how to make Onshape MBD / PMI awesome' - I'll leave this up to Onshape to begin when they feel ready for that.. 

billy2

3dcad I'm ready, let's do it

petr_svoboda

Roll out PMI /MBD, please. 

3dcad

@petr_svoboda
Create improvement request ticket using feedback in cad, that way request gets higher value - mine is already in

john_mcclary

+1 to PMI/MBD

It's the best part of solidworks (even tho solidworks is a buggy piece of garbage) that level of detail in the model (while you're thinking about that feature) just pops into drawing automagically. Saves a lot of questions when handing off your model to a detailer to make up some drawings.

john_mcclary

Posted on wrong page ignore this post