how do you deal with the SW drawings problem ?

Howdy,

I'm just wondering how do you deal with the problem SW has with re-opening
drawings and having things messed up ? The reason is that I am looking at a
job that will require drawings which I may have to go back to. If it takes
me an hour just to fix things everytime I need to dimension a feature in
question then it is a costly waste of time. I presume this has to do with
drawing views updating to the model referenced. The work-arounds posted here
are no certain fixes. Would it be better to export a model to another CAD
package and work like that ?

Thanks in advance

Laz

 

This is where Pdmworks, would be great, because you can open the assembly
from Pdmworks, to your "local" machine, measure any feature, then delete the
"local" assembly. Your original, (in Pdmworks), remains untouched.

 

This also works for any document, that you have in Pdmworks, including
drawing documents.

 

Would saving as detached drawing help?

I am just curious as to why your drawings are messed up every time you
open them?

 

I am not the only person with the drawings problem here. I believe it is
because I place my dimensions/ tolerances etc. according to what I feel
provides the most aesthetically pleasing/ informative locations. The problem
is that after saving such a drawing, say to complete at another time, when I
open it all my dimensioning, views and text get really messed up.

Laz

 

Laz,

You will have to explain what you mean by messed up? I have no idea
what you are talking about because I can't see your screen.

It helps when asking for help to let the reader know what version of SW
you are on, what service pack and some specifics about your problem.
When you say something is messed up in a general way nobody can really
begin to help you.

 

I believe they're using 2005; not sure what sp, but according to the posts
I've read here it doesn't matter. I want to stay in SW because of my
familiarity with it, but I don't want to take the job and end up looking
like an idiot because the software has a problem with drawings. It would be
wiser for me to void that issue altogether and just do my drawings in the
Cadkey they have there.

Laz

news://nntp:119/d5p791$224$

 

So this is more of a general feeling that SW does this, but nothing
really specific?

1. SW in general will produce suitable, repeatable drawings given the
part or assembly used to make the drawing are not changed. For archival
purposes you have detached drawings.
2. Issues with complex drawings having dangling dimensions does happen.
It is frequently due to poor practice somewhere in the parts or
assemblies making up the drawing. The good news is that you typically
don't bring in a lot of dimensions on an assembly drawing as that is
left for the details.
3. The most common reason I know of for annotations to move around is
due to the operator not locking focus on a view or on the sheet as the
case may be before making the annotation.

Example: a general note placed apparently on the sheet, but in reality
associated with a view will move with that view. The fix is to CTRL-X
the annotation, lock focus on the sheet and CTRL-C paste the annotation
the sheet.

4. On a micro scale annotations can move around slightly. Using the
align functionality can help with this. However, it does frequently
occur when printing or zooming in and out. While this may be more of a
MSoft issue, it is no excuse for SW allowing it to happen. Had SW gone
with the Apple platform this probably wouldn't be an issue as Apple
seems to have figured out how to do WYSIWYG long ago.

5. SW still hasn't gotten translation of a drawing from SW to DWG/DXF
right. You cannot trust that text or dimensions will be the same size
and in the same place as on the SW drawing. Nor can you always do a
clean edit of text or dimensions and expect it to come out right.

6. SW still hasn't gotten translation of drawings from SW to eDrawings
right. See previous posts here. Same concerns as with DWG/DXF.

7. There can be printer to printer variability in printed drawings.
This is a user fixable problem for the most part.

It is hard to believe you are familiar with SW and haven't run across
these minor issues.

 

I greatly appreciate your information. I am printing out your information
for my reference. Familiarity is a relative term. While I recall I
experienced similar issues with dimensions at an earlier job bidding for a
contract; it was model, drawing, print and run...no time to go back.

Thanks again

Laz

 

Geez. This has been going on forever. I got a SPR WAAAAAAAAY back in
Swx 2003 regarding this. What have those susbscription $ been paying
for? Oh that's right, the parts pallette changed to the "Design
Library".

Sorry, this is one of my major pet peeves. I used to own a company
where we did all our design in Swx but the customer required dwg's. We
spent a lot of time cleaning up the junk dwg's that Swx creates.

CD.