patent drawing surface shading in sw???

Hi,

Is anyone here is familiar with the allowable types of surface
shading/stippling that are allowed in design and utility patent drawings?

I am trying to figure out how to do this in solidworks and it is not easy.

A hatch pattern on flat surfaces only similiar to ISO03W100 comes close,
but when applying to an isometric with HLR the hatch doesn't respect the
HLR rules in effect and bleeds into areas in which it should not be seen.

I also came close with a custom pattern texture, and then rendering with
contour lines, close but not close enough.

I just decided that after all these years I should be able to generate this
type of shading electronically. As it is I'm still drawing them by hand.

I'm curious what others are doing?

Thx

Zander

 

Zander.

I don't think it makes any difference at all with the patent office.
And may be more a preference with the patent attorney. My last few
patents went in with straight SW (hidden line- no shading) generated
graphics. In fact, one of them was from an STL file, triangles
included, the thing looked like crap. The draftsman used autoCad or
something and just deleted most of the triangles, except for the areas
he couldn't without loosing details. I am not even sure how he got the
STL file, must have converted it from an IGS, or the Native SW file.

clay

 

Requirements for patent drawings are in 37 CFR 1.84 (
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/consolidated_rules.pdf ).

 

(Richard) wrote in

Thanks for the info!

 

What always cracks me up is we just sent the cad file in a dxf format and
our
patent attorneys have a graphic artist recreate them to pass muster with the
PTO.
We thought we could send in a engineering print and guess what the PTO said
no
way.