Can you do a "New From" for Drafting 2

[engjeff]

I created a base design with all the Drawings for this base design. When I do a new from and select the Base design how do I bring along all the Drawings?

 

[Azrael]

I would recommend you to use the Product Knowledge Template workbench. Open the assembly/part and all drawings and use the "Create a Document Template" feature and tie in all the drawings as external documents. If you want to make it easy to access store it in catalog and from the catalog publish the template, then you can reach it from tools/customize in the commands tab, choose catalogs in the categories field and you have command that you can place in a toolbar to quickly access the template. (this also work for power copies and udf's)

In short this would give you an assembly/part template with the same behavior as a file new from with drawings tied to it.

There may be other ways but I can't of one right now, so please chip in, I'm interested if there are other ways without the PKT workbench.

 

[DBezaire]

Azrael - That is the best methodology. A new from on a design requires you to re-point links then you will have update problems with certain dimensions.....

Regards,
Derek

 

[engjeff]

I completed creating a document template and adding all the drawings. I also added it to the catalog and put the icon on my toolbar.

My next questions are:

How do I use the template, do I now do "New From" the product with the attached drawings?

When I click the icon, linked from the catalog nothing happens. Do you have any ideas what I am doing wrong?

 

[Azrael]

I think your problem is that you added the document into the catalog as document and not as feature. When you add component in the catalog you should pick "select external feature" and go to the assembly/part where you have created the "document template" and pick it in the specification tree.

You can double check in the catalog file in the reference that that the type is Feature and not Document

 

[m1mason]

the knowledge temp suggestion is a good one.

I usually detail parts more than assemblies. So I have a drawing template with all my settings and title block items. I then goto file>New From and pick that template.

http://mtm-cadtutorials.blogspot.com/

 

[engjeff]

First, the solution worked great thank you!

Is there a way to update all the prints without going into each and every print and manually updating?

Also, I have a script that adds the items items from the 3d model into the title block. Is there a way to automate those two items?

 

[Azrael]

Maybe if you include the script and a reaction in the catdrawings it can be done. I'm guessing the name property change could be used as a trigger.

 

[ronu]

Just do a new from on the drawing - this brings the models linked to it, with it, rename as required. You will now have a new drawing linked to new models
Ronu

 

[engjeff]

I just wanted to thank Azrael again, this has saved me countless hours!

Jeff

 

[woodaaay]

engjeff,

Were you able to find a way to have every sheet in the external drawing documents update automatically once they were instantiated?

I am currently facing the same problem and have so far only been able to have 2 of the 4 drawing sheets update automatically.

I am not sure where to put a reaction that will guarantee that the views will be up-to-date. It seems every script i use tries to update the drawing before it is actually there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Brian Wood
Engineering Services
Concentric Asia Pacific

 

[Azrael]

I have another idea, if you check tools/utility you will find that there is a batch launcher for drawing update.

 

[engjeff]

woodaaay,

As Azrael said there is a tool called "updatebatch" it works great. I do not know why this is not automaticly done anyways...

 

[engjeff]

The "Product Knowledge Template" is great, the only problem is sometimes the drawings do not transfer over. They are listed in the PKT. Any ideas?

 

[Azrael]

No ideas, never came across that, could it be a bug? Have you tried on other machines?

 

[engjeff]

Any recommendations on doing the PKT per drawing or per product?

 

[engjeff]

I think I may have found the cause of my problem, when I initialize the Product Knowledge Template it give the error:

"Some Parts (....) have bad context. The instantiation of this template may not work correctly."

What does this mean? Can I ignore it?

 

[Azrael]

Do have any referencing related to context links? do you use root context? Is it something you can upload?