NO MORE DRAWINGS

Everyone,
I am currently working on a project to eliminate or reduce the
amount of drawings we do and send to the shop. We are wanting to give
the shop the abilitiy to view models that already have the crucial
dimensions displayed. We dont want to give them full access to models
and we also want to simplify it for them as much as we can. We are
looking into some viewers like Edrawings and what not but not sure if
that is the route to take, we do currently use DBworks which has some
viewing capabilities. We have alot of great ideas and I just want to
get some input from you guys, has anyone ever done this and has it
worked well for you, any ideas and input will be greatly appreciated.
Can anyone recommend some good viewing programs for SW models that is
not very costly.

Thanks,
Stew

 

Our buisness is kind of unique. We build large utitlity structures. We
are trying to eliminate the layout drawings, we are already in the
process of eliminating the smaller part drawings that are cut by CNC,
but let me ask you, what do the parts getted checked against if there
are no drawings? Basicly our shop using the layout drawings to layout
parts on the structure and weld them in place. We know we probably
won't eliminate the drawings totally but I feel that we can give tham
a model and maybe a very generic drawing with it. The problem is we
are spended 60 to 70% of our time doing drawings because they are so
detailed. If we could eliminate that our out put to the shop would gp
through the roof. Thanks for the reply and again I appreciate all the
input I get from yall.

Stew

 

Modelpress had a free viewer with measuring, but Myriad got all over
tha company so it's not free anymore -> eDrawings Professional might
be better.

 

We are doing Reduced Dimension Drawings, this is kind of the best of
both worlds. We have a document for our travelers, ISO 9000, etc; but
we do not spend hours creating complete details.

I have some posts about this on my blog (mid to end of the page):

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse/perspectives_from_engineering/index.html

You may also want to look at ASME Y14.41-2003

Good luck in your quest. You may not totally get rid of drawings but
you can greatly reduce the amount of time spent in engineering
completely detailing a part that the guys are going to us the math
data directly anyway. It is a big time saver for us.

Cheers,

Anna Wood

 

Anna,
First of all thank you very much for your last post, you are
always so helpful. I have to ask you though. How do you keep up with
all the data, revisions and stuff like that, it seems like it could be
a nightmare to keep track of when drawings are not involved.

Stew

 

We still create drawings. We are never going to get away from that.
We just do not dimension every single, nit-picky detail on a drawing.
Just what is needed for those operators in our company that still use
manual systems i.e: the grinders, jig bore operations, etc and any
special notes and stuff that do not do as well in the data files. It
is a balance to have only what is necessary on a drawing and not re-
hash the entire math model again on a detail.

Also if you go all electronic, and that is what the ASME spec will
help you with, you rev control those files just like a drawing, with
custom properties, etc. PDM/ERP systems help with all of this. A
file is a file, be it a Word doc, CNC G-Code file, solid model file,
engineering drawings, work instrution, traveler, ISO docs, they all
can be rev controlled and you have to have the systems in place to
help you manage them.

We use a product that my company's software division markets called
VisualVault. There are oddles of different software products that can
help you manage your documents.

Cheers,

Anna

 

Perhaps one of the reasons they are so busy now is because they employ
real machinists and don't treat them like they are operators or call
them operators.

 

We mostly do critical to function (CTF) drawings, which I imagine are
analagous to your 'reduced dimension drawings'. Since most of our
stuff is made directly from the CAD data, we focus our efforts on
developing inspection drawings to insure that parts that are supposed
to fit actually will... fit.
We believe strongly that drawing aren't going away. Sure, we don't
need to define every stupid cross-section on stuff "that doesn't
matter" (note quotes) that will be machined from the CAD data anyway,
but without a dated and revision controlled piece of paper (or locked
digital file) defining CTF dims (with tolerances), how can you hold a
vendor accountable if what you paid for doesn't turn out to be what
you paid for? Answer - a drawing (or pdf file of a drawing)
Ed

 

Ed,

We are in agreement, just have some different terminolgy. What you
state is our philosophy also.

In some areas we have a bit more detail/verbiage on a drawing. In
others we let the math data do the talking. We always work very
closely with our manufacturing folks to make sure we are giving them
what they need to complete our builds efficiently. We have had pretty
good success with our RDD's.

One distinct advantage we have with implementing RDD's is that there
is very little that we design that we send out to have someone else
build. Even with that it is amazing how many of our suppliers have no
issues working with math data and a reduced dimension drawing. I am
hard pressed to even name one where that was an issue for them.

Cheers,

Anna

 

Stew, I work for a job shop doing fabricated metal - both heavy
equipment, paving and military, and a lot of point of purchase
displays. Over the past year we have gone to a paperless shop. We
installed 20 some shop carts and all our job routings are looked up on
these pc's, time logged and material tracked. Also, we have attached
all the prints to the job routings, using either tif scans or
edrawings. This has save a huge amount of time in the shop - no lost
job travelers, no paper prints to track, and revision control is very
easy. With edrawings the number of parts made backward has been
reduced. Our next initiative is to replace all customer prints with
only our own layouts. This will help the shop in not having to
interpret a hundred-plus different drawing schemes.

Paperless routings and prints has been a tremendous time saver and
cost reducer. The engineering work load is about the same and the
benefits to the shop have easily paid for the shop computers.

Anna and Ed, I love the idea of RDD's with CTF dimensions. We do this
on sample orders and in-house tooling. This is usually done when the
customer supplies us with SW data. We mark the print as "customer
supplied data." The inspector checks given dimensions and visible
features. If a hole is shown on the print but not dimensioned it needs
to be on the part, and if it looks like it's about the right size and
in the right location, then it's ok to run the part. Production runs
now are frequently stopped by the night inspector who won't sign off
if a dimension is missing, even though all cutting programs are driven
by the same files.

We will be discussing RDD's here in the near future to improve our
flow of work.

Interesting discussion and valuable input.

regards, Diego

 

Stew,

I don't recommend sending out dumb files or reference only files. Use
the SolidWorks native files. Much cleaner. No translation,
interpretation issues. There may be reasons to want to protect your
models, but in my experience, it's not worth the trouble. Use vendors
you trust, and have nondisclosures in place.

That a side, if you feel you must protect your files, send dumb
models. This will allow your vendor to import them into their CNC
much easier.

Matt Lorono
http://sw.fcsuper.com

 

Something that hasn't been mentioned is the question of if you can
open the CAD files in 10 years.

What if you don't continue to subscribe to Solidworks, and the version
you have won't install on "Windows Super-Duper". Or you have
subscribed, but the files won't open in the version you now have?

Joe Dunfee

 

Consider a profile on a part ... 2D or 3D ... that is produced
by one tool.
IF the first part is correct AND no banquers are involved
THEN it is possible to check data at the beginnig & end of the
toolpath of that one tool and if both are correct (assumes correct
process planning & in-process tolerancing) THEN every feature
produced between the start & the end have to be correct.
Any tool or process failures would have produced bad data
at one or the other (or both) ends of that tool's path.

BTW, Don't forget that CMM inspection can be driven directly
from the CAD/CAM data as well AND the results can be compared
back to the 3D model.

 

Sort of depends on the "vendor" & the process.

How did you *communicate*?

Some features cannot easily be dimensioned either ...
so the argument either fails or nobody can ever make
such parts, eh?

IF a vendor *needs* detailed dimensioning .... their
choice & expense I expect (as others would not).

 

Many of the very large firms have been doing this for a LONG time.
An advantage of CAD/CAM systems I expect ..

 

Qualify & control the process, not inspect quality into the
final parts.
Much can be done with non-graphical data and some fairly simple
API programming in many CAD/CAM systems as well.

 

Once yet again you demonstrate very clearly that you don't begin to
grasp the subject at all.

WHY are you always so utterly clueless?

 

Cliff,

My background includes working for the GM Truck Group. Yes, we were
doing RDD's at least ten years ago and working direct from CAD data
well before that. The concept has been around a long time.

Cheers,

Anna Wood

 

Answer - a drawing (or pdf file of a drawing)

 

P&W, GE, McD, BIW, GM Powertrain, Delco, Inland, etc.