CAD Procedures

[BandH]

Hi all,

I'm currently reviewing our CAD procedures at work. At the moment, we have a very "manual" system - the following is a brief description:
User takes the next part/assembly number from the Drawing Code document. This is an MS Word document and all information is input manually. The numbering system we use is quite good, so there is no change needed there.
We then save the part/assembly/drawing as that number - the tree structure in PDM is set up to follow the number system, so again no real problem there.
We create the model - at this stage all the properties, including the information from the Drawing Code document, are input manually e.g. drawing number, description etc. This is start of the problem, because the wrong number or description can be entered - or worse again, not modified, or worse again, nothing is entered at all! The info can be inserted through either SolidWorks or PDM.
At the moment, the drawing templates are not set up to reference the properties, but this is something I am working on now and will be implemented when we install SW2007.
The parts list on the drawing is generated from the sub-component properties - this is fairly well defined.
However, we then generate Bill of Materials manually in Excel - this can lead to additional problems e.g. wrong information inserted etc.
Overall, I've estimated that only 12% of the process is "automated" - in my opinion this is very low and results in time wasting and errors. So the question I have, what can I do to make things more automated? For example, can the information be fed into SolidWorks from the Word file (or another file)? How do other people create Bill of Materials? Any suggestions at all would be welcome.

Regards,

Bandh

 

[Finethread]

Bandh,
The functionality you're looking for can be provided by a PLM (product lifecycle management) product. Check out SolidWorks partners. There are many solutions to choose from. Of course this costs $$$$, but it appears like you already have pertinent metrics for the justification.

Good luck

 

[handleman]

Why do you generate the bill of materials manually in Excel? Why not just export the BOM to a CSV file and then import it into Excel? It's also very easy to write a SolidWorks macro to put the data directly into Excel. The exporting code As far as getting your part numbers and custom properties, it sounds like a good application for an Access database. As long as your numbering system makes some sort of sense it would be relatively simple to either generate new numbers on the fly or generate a whole batch of numbers at once for users to claim. Part numbers would be one table in the database, and other tables could contain default custom property values, or even lists of common values. Users would click one button upon creating a new part. This would bring up a dialog box/form with dropdown boxes, etc. and a single button that would go look for the next available part number, copy it, flag it in the database as being used by the current person, and enter it into the custom properties. I don't know much about PLM systems or how much they cost, but if you have some time these are all things that someone with a smattering of VBA experience can do.

 

[smcadman]

We have been using PropertyEditorSpec for about 2 years now. It was the only FREE property macro that handled configuration-specific properties easily. Simply edit the .ini file in notepad to your company properties.

We also saved the part and assembly model templates with our properties fields in them.

Propertyeditorspec

Propertyeditorspec_screenshot

SW07 SP1.0

Flores

 

[BandH]

Thanks for the input. We don't really want to go down the road of a PLM, but I was interested to hear about that Access could be used, I'll look into that more.

If anyone has other suggestions, please keep them coming!

Regards,

Bandh