eDrawings-Would you send them to a customer?

I just generated 40 eDrawings. About half are so bad I don't think they
can be sent to the vendor. Every one has a block or two in it. The text
looks awful. Some fill in the part (these are drawings) with black.
Great on printer cartridges.

 

I agree that edrawings don't always appear as intended and can be
scrambelled sometimes. However I do send them to customers - but not
all customers. I only send them to customers who I have worked with
for some time and where they understand that often what they are
looking at is 'Work in Progress' and not a Phase End Presentation.
Thes are still with quality paper drawings and renderings.

I always create PDFs of 2d drawings and EXE edrawings of the assembly
and put then in a zip file. These are then sent to clients for
archiving. I use the exe drawings so that in the future people can
always look back. New managers etc at clients can look back at past
work and get a better understanding of what has gone before as we
discuss new work.

However I have never found that clients have the patience ( or
perhaps skill) to use the annotation features and other more advanced
features of edrawings. I am usually on the phone explaining how to
look at the model to illustrate my points.


So my verdict - usefull but not perfect or foolproof.



Regards



Jonathan Stedman

 

For as many years as eDrawings have been around and all the hype that
surrounds them you would think they would be capable of rendering,
verbatim, what was on a SW drawing.

 

Yes - I would agree - but I gave up long ago thinking that Solidworks
ever completes anything it starts.

 

I send them to my customers, but only 3-D models. The only customers that I
send them to are very computer literate, and have actually told me that it
helps a ton while designing things for them.

For 2-D I always generate PDF files and send those.

 

P.

Don't get me started......
Been a pet peeve of mine for years.

They hype the SW "Chopper" but they can't use their own product to
send a proper WYSIWYG e-Drawing to a machine shop.

Every new release I create an e-drawing from the company SW template.
Every new release the e-drawing that is generated does not match my
template.
(i.e. logos that go missing, Title block text (Titles) that look fine
in SW drawings "bleed" off the edge of a SW title block, notes that
appear in weird positions, sizes, etc.....)

If you can't trust a application to generate something simple like a
title block - how do you trust the dimensions it generates?

Don't get me wrong - I like the concept. Its the lack of "real-world"
execution that I have a problem with.

Len

Len

 

Ditto


Kev

 

Pretty much the same here, except that I only very rarely send eDrawings.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Yea, between half of the computer illiterate customers I have and the
other half that have old outdated computers (which e-drawings eats for
lunch with complex models), PDF's are the only way to go.

I guess the real frustration is having to deal with folks who still
haven't learned how to use a computer! What could be simpler than
these automated windows installers, high speed internet connections,
and low cost computers.
Some of these bozos should have tried to install stuff off of 14
floppies using DOS and Compuserve. I think their ignorance is just an
excuse to not spend time doing what they are supposed to be doing which
is reviewing tech info and giving input, they would rather wait until
everything is done and its too late to make changes to bitch and
complain.

I just feel lucky that Acrobat is so widely used that everyone has it,
now if you could just add notes to it that print off...... (most bozos
can't just read from the screen, they even print off their emails to
read them)

 

There is a print setting in Acrobat that will let you print
notes/annotations. Look in the print dialog box. (This is assuming you have
the full version of Acrobat).

 

I sent this in to SW and to their credit they did respond with an SPR
on at least one thing.