yang686526

automatically generated drawings
we are starting to ramp up to automate some of our models and drawings. basically, every job that goes through is unique and based on rules. the problem now is when the drawing updates.....sometimes the dimensions shuffle around and overlap. some dimensions seem to move with the part ok but others do not. angle dimensions are especially bad.
so how do others do this? is there a trick to it?
jason capriotti
jason.capriotti@thyssenkrupp.com
solidworks 2009 sp3.0
winxp 32 & 64bit
check out driveworks or rulestream, with design automation systems (you are rules based from the way i read it) you can control things like drawing annotation locations while the drawing is being updated
jason,
i know what you mean. i have made a few dedicated configurator solutions but have so far focused on the models. the next step is to develop functionality which is able to automatically move views, change scale, change format size, move dimensions and so on. i don't think there are any easy short cuts but like matthew says some of the established configurator systems can do it so why not...
one thing is handling the views. it's faily simple to get the position and size of a view and to move it but handling the position of dimensions and notes seems to be an extensive and complex affair.
i have been thinking about some how taking a snapshot of the drawing and store the location of all the views, the annotations, dimensions ans so on in order to have their relative position. but depending of the changes made to the model shown i can easily imagine situations where it will be impossible to get everything to look right.
jorn bjarning
cswp
cad & plm consultant
sw2008 sp5 / sw2009 sp2
hopefully i will be getting on to such a topic shortly with my new program to automatically create drawings. at the moment i am doing the view creation, but i will eventually move onto the dimensioning and annotation and so will have to deal with these issues.
once i have i can help you out more here.
i recently ran into something while tring to make drawing automation a little easier.
i'm still playing with it and trying to get it to work better, but i've been able to get some dimensions created in the model view (then just hide the dimensions so they don't show in the model) and have them show up in the drawing.
this not only saves you trying to place the dimensions, but they are linked to the model so they move with the view.
as i said i'm still playing with it, so i'll keep you updated as i find out more, but in the mean time you might want to play around with it yourself.
it's saved me a lot of headache trying to place dimensions in the drawing itself.
quick