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Are drawings on the burner?
mark_biasotti
Member Posts: 123 ✭✭✭
Has your team started to work on a basic drawings capability for OS? I don't pretend to understand your target market, but if you target market is my industry (product design) you will not make any in roads without a basic drwg capability. If your initial target market is a 3D modeler for RP only, you are probably okay.
As much as we all have wanted drawings to go away over the last two decades, they have not and they are as necessary as ever for all our vendors regardless of the complexity of the part. This is because 3D data, as good as it is these days and as many different formats that we have, is still not a complete communication for manufacturing. The good news is that the initial drwgs capability does not have to be complex; many of our drawings are CTF (Critical to Function) or MTF (Materials, Texture, Finish) and therefore, basic dimension capability along with annotations and note table will suffice. (Attached is one of my latest CTF drawings - sorry to have to blur the images but I do not have permission from my client to show this.) Also, these dwg documents are extremely important for conveying tolerances because we will often negotiate these parameters with our tooler or machinist and hold them to it. To ignore tolerance in machine design or product design, always ends up costing someone $$$$.
The short of it for my industry is this; as much as I can model in OS, it is all for not if I can not produce a basic drawing for my vendor or client. Over the pass 7 months being back in the product design industry, I'm more keenly aware of how important drawings are to our clients and vendors. Often times, toward the end of the project and when things really start to press down on schedule and nerves, we spend more time around the drawing than the 3D data.
M
As much as we all have wanted drawings to go away over the last two decades, they have not and they are as necessary as ever for all our vendors regardless of the complexity of the part. This is because 3D data, as good as it is these days and as many different formats that we have, is still not a complete communication for manufacturing. The good news is that the initial drwgs capability does not have to be complex; many of our drawings are CTF (Critical to Function) or MTF (Materials, Texture, Finish) and therefore, basic dimension capability along with annotations and note table will suffice. (Attached is one of my latest CTF drawings - sorry to have to blur the images but I do not have permission from my client to show this.) Also, these dwg documents are extremely important for conveying tolerances because we will often negotiate these parameters with our tooler or machinist and hold them to it. To ignore tolerance in machine design or product design, always ends up costing someone $$$$.
The short of it for my industry is this; as much as I can model in OS, it is all for not if I can not produce a basic drawing for my vendor or client. Over the pass 7 months being back in the product design industry, I'm more keenly aware of how important drawings are to our clients and vendors. Often times, toward the end of the project and when things really start to press down on schedule and nerves, we spend more time around the drawing than the 3D data.
M
3
Comments
Count me in for wanting drwgs as well. Also because PMI in model space is a mess (at least every time I've seen them...).
Dries
- Design part
- Draw part
- Send drawing out for quote
- Send files (released drawings and 3D models) in a supported format
- Manufacture asks questions via email or on the phone
- Manufacturer makes a toolpath file
- Manufacturer inspection (requires another inspection file), result as a PDF inspection report (loads of different formats) or with the results simply marked onto a photocopy of the drawing
- Our inspection (requires ANOTHER inspection file be built), result as PDF inspection report (another format, at least one we can recognise)
- Part sent out for coating (often requires another drawing be sent with masking details etc. b/c a coatings supplier will switch off if they see a drawing with tolerances called out on it!)
- ...
and that's a simple workflow. What if it's a large weldment that requires a separate fabrication shop and machine shop, and heat treatment between, and coating afterwards? What about in complex parts where there's an entire back-and-forth with the supplier in order to redesign for manufacture?I think that all we need is the one 3D model. What if you could specify your datums & tolerances on the model, and write comments. What if you could open up a single part and it looked a bit like a wiki page (with a discussion section)? A supplier might open that part and see the general notes section first, click through and see the marked up model, and leave questions/comments on the model or in a comments section.
Then, for inspection - what if you could mark-up inspection results onto the model? You could even run analysis on small batches (90% of these holes are within tolerance band A) without having to go through all the inspection reports and tabulate the data yourself. I know that these options are available in most inspection programs, but once you've been handed the data by your supplier you're stuck with what you're given often.
A coatings manufacture would open up the same model and see a different scene. They'd only see the masking operation and the coating specification (for example). Imagine if you could attach their purchase order to the model as well, you'd have everything in one place finally!
For the initial release?
Yes, I agree but not in the next 5 years and only if the ability to communicate non-geometric information. GD&T is the hope but did you know that we did a massive initiative at SW to get GD&T mainstream (between 2008 and 2011) and it never stuck with our customers.
M
From what I've seen of the aircraft industry, it is moving towards 3D GD&T now. We often recieve parts with GD&T marked up, but they're usually supported by a drawing.
The idea that we can issue marked up 3D data is a CAD vendor's dream. In the real world we issue STEP and IGES, maybe Parasolid, backed by a reference PDF drawing of key dimensions and tolerances.
TBH there is more 3D and 2D PDF used out there than any CAD vendor MBD system.
I'd rather see the money spent on a good cam solution so we could cut parts as easily as 3D printing them.
I have heard CATIA sales people say 3D is all that matters, yet every single CATIA customer I have sends me reams of 2D drawings for review, or when we have a meeting we print out sheets of drawings and...wait for it...scribble all over them! How antiquated! No. If drawings get pulled from a product I pull that product.
FYI CAD history is littered with potentially great products that could never get the drawings part right. SolidWorks dominated the landscape because they got the drawings part good enough for 90% of users.
If you want to see how critical drawings are ask anybody working in AEC. BIM? We get architect and contractors drawing every day that have not seen any 3D.
Drawings serve a critical part in the design process. They are essential for standards based design processes and manufacturing process sheets. Most factories do not have digital retrieval of data, its is still very much a paper based system in many places.
20 years ago I attended a seminar given by PTC and listened to their UK chief say how drawings "would become irrelevant within 5 years". Well that went well didn't it? No, "drawings are dead" is simply sales talk for "use my 3D viewing product".
Many of the items I design and build have a 20+ year life. These products will have several owners and the parts and service manuals get lost so new are needed. Currently we are working on posting them as PDF files on the website so customers can be on the same page as the parts person. SolidWorks does not work great for this so we use Word and add the SolidWorks drawing portions as needed. This means we save some items at .jpg files, edit them and add them to the Word document. This has proven to be slow and painful. Some years ago we tried using SoildWorks files in Word but with file update problems it would trash the Word document so you would have to start over.
M
Like Kevin eludes to you can problems with "save as PDF" from SW ( embedded images not showing correctly) if you don't have acrobat standard or illustrator installed. But the work around is instead of saving-as, use the print command and nitro print driver.
Mark
This has happened to me many times. One extremely important feature of drawings is that they become POR (Plan of Record) for when vendors do NOT get things right, as a consultancy we can more clearly mitigate and resolve issues between our clients and our tooling vendors and CM's. In fact, this recently happened (tooler ignored a part line detail in the drawing) and resulted in a multi-$100K redo of the tool (because we had it documented on the drawing.)
Mark
Besides, it is very hard to get a Sharpie out and scribble on a 3D model on screen...
All I'm saying is that I've managed to have better parts made consistently when the machinist has a 3D model compared to giving them a static image of a 2D representation. It only makes sense to me that we allow a 3D file that embeds this information. I also realize people won't catch on to doing this for a long time, if it ever does.
I certainly could see a machine shop/toolmaker working quite easily from a 3d model, especially if using CNC machines with programs like master cam, etc, the programer may even be demanding a iges or step file but they still need to know fit's and tolerances, surface finishes, material detail, thread sizing(not often on model). You want consistent nothing up to the operators discretion. QA departments need to know critical dimensions to check off maybe i can't see outside the box but i think a drawing is best for this.
I quite often find tradesmen viewing the 3d models with edrawing viewer to gain a better understanding of the parts they are making, much easier than visualising from a 2d drawing however a few iso's and detail views should be able to tell the story. A good draftsmen should be able to show the detail needed to built the part with out confusion and cad software should give the draftsman to tools to easily do this . I think sometimes time could be waste messing around rotating a model on a screen.
I also quite often email a drawings or screen shot for someone to use on their smartphone. There are occasions when I have been away from the office and sms's a screen shot of a .pdf drawing saved in my dropbox to tradie doing work for me.
I could also see a 3d model rather than a drawing being very useful in an inventory store, when looking for parts the storeman needs to know what the part looks like, best if it was linked into ERP System.
Profile cutting need's a DXF file. You can almost get away with out a drawing with these parts, sometime you see a simple text box in the dxf file with spec like mat, thickness, part number etc. This is a pain for the programer as he/she has to delete this from the file before programming. You also need some form of drawing for the part picker to identify the part when pulling from the sheet, the program software some times creates this. I normally do a drawing for these parts with some overall dimensions to ensure scale is right.
I am hoping Onshape can integrate PDF's and DXF's with revision history, also need someform of approval on the file so vendors know parts are good to manufacturer. Will be interesting to see how the drawing side of the software will work, look forward to see it.
Thats enough from me.
Bruce
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
go back 20 years. Was SolidWorks released with no drawings? No. The harsh reality is the current functionality in Onshape is on a a par with SolidWorks 97 when I started using it. Without drawings. Cloud, browser cad, branching etc are not enough. Without modelling and drawing functionality it will not fly.
We get it. We don't believe our differentiators are a substitute for drawings or a full set of modeling features. But things like branching and merging, cloud data model, collaboration, seamless upgrades, etc. have to be built in at the foundation -- which is why they are already there. These are also things that (unlike modeling and drawings) we didn't know how to do when we started -- because nobody has done it before with CAD -- and we had to validate them. So Onshape's current functionality is to a large extent a reflection of software engineering requirements, and not just the most important must-haves for the most users. Those we know how to build and they are coming
Mark
As much as I hate the wait, I want you guy get these core features in place, so down the track huge productivity gains will be seen.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Drgs will always be required, because in the end in all industries, these are a contract.
They can direct the user to refer to 3D CAD as a spec, but can also overrule the 3D CAD.
Other test requirements, specifications or sections thereof can be included on the drg & accessed at any time.
A Contract always needs to be on paper for the obvious reason that electronic data can & may one day fail.
It's the analogue backup.
Without the ability to transfer the 3D data to drawings here makes things pretty difficult.
We keep on hearing possible dates of the drawing availability but the last I heard was possibly mid to late June.
Any update on that? We're into July now.