Can you mirror a drawing

Greetings everybody,
How do people go about creating drawings of parts which have left
and right-handed versions?
I have a part which I mirrored and it seems ridiculous to do basically
the same drawing twice. Is there a way around duplicating the work
when you mirror a part?
Thanks,
Chris

 

....or you can do the super cheat way like I used to on castings/forgings
(eg: 2 body halves)

Create the drawing of one and note the surface that gets mirrored (eg.
"surface -X-, see dash table")....

Create dash table that states:

P/N: xxxx-1 (as shown)
P/N: xxxx-2 (opposite - part mirrored about surface -X-)

Granted, when we did this we were under a big deadline and as long as the
mirror didn't have any additional features (drilled holes and such) after
they were mirrored that had to be detailed....

This way also had the added benefit of not having to worry about a second
drawing or sheet to update/rev should you have changes....

The tool maker hated us for it, but what the hell!

Scott

 

That's common practice in aerospace where there are literally thousands of
handed parts.

Yes, I did when I was fabbing parts. Had to think a little harder. <G>

I wouldn't ~think~ it would be as big a deal with machined parts unless they are
manually machining from the drawings(?).

 

This was one of the top 5 enhancement request at SolidWorks World last
year. It wouldn't surprise me to see this new functionality available
soon in a future release. It would be very nice to have.

 

This was one of the top 5 enhancement request at

Really shouldn't be hard to do. Mirror views with annotations?

Another sorta interesting thought ... in concert with Y14.41 type model
annotation practices it should be (?) rather simple to mirror views and shown
annotations. Still some annotation clean-up req'd?

I think I'd still squawl about having to detail opposites, though.

 

Depending on what the drawing is used for it may be to your company's
advantage to fully detail both drawings. If the skill level of persons
working on the parts (or supervising them) isn't too high, (Oh, I'm
sorry, I didn't read the note) having two fully dim'd drawings may save
some money over reworking or remaking half of the parts.

Like any good comic, you need to know your audience.

Diego

 

P/N: xxxx-2 (opposite - part mirrored about surface -X-)

Just a curiosity - an interesting fact is that mirrored part is a mirrored
part regardless of the selected reference surface. The selected surface
affects only to the location of origin and the planes, which are only
imaginary datums!


-h-

 

I agree with Diego. Having to look at drawing of part 1 to make part 2
is bound to lead to errors.

When I've machined my own parts _even with_ fully detailed mirrored
drawings, I've still found there's room for confusion. You do them
both in the same setup, therefore you have both drawings in front of
you. They look basically the same, and it's easy enough to glance over
at the wrong one for a hole location. I actually use highlighter on
the prints sometimes when I don't think people will read the
instructions.

Thanks for all the input, folks.

 

I spend part of the day at my desk on layouts (we are primarily a job
shop, with some in-house design) and part of the day in the shop
looking at orders I had my hands on, to answer questions, make
suggestions, etc. It's remarkable that people often feel the most
important thing they do is to keep moving, rather than taking the time
to read the drawing(s) and think about how they are going to fabricate
the part. I frequently use highlighter too on the shop drawings.

Now we are moving toward a paperless environment, with a tif or pdf
file in place of paper drawings. I wonder whether a voice messge that
plays when the drawing is opened would be effective to highlight key
notes and dimensions.

Peace on earth. Diego