Company wants to use Inch drawing formats, B,C,D and E for parts designed in Metric 3

[jeff97070]

I have been asked to make some drawing formats.

Here is where I need you opinion. Our last machine we made took 8 years from design to manufacture and all of the parts were in metric and we used metric drawing formats A0, A1, A2 and A3 and everything worked fine.

Now the new project the parts are being designed in metric. But I was just asked or told to make inch Drawing formats in B, C, D and E but to have all the information in the title block to callout metric everything.

I repeated the fact to them you have metric drawing formats and this manager said were buying a large format printer and they want these inch formats made.

Is there an ASME standard out there that says this is WRONG violates the standard? If I can get this information I would like to present this to them.

Thank you,
J.S.

 

[TheTick]

I did a little experiment...

First, I drew a 10mm line on B-size paper. I measured it, and it was 10mm long.

Then, I drew a 10mm line on A3 size paper. I measured it, and it was 10mm long.

Big problem!

 

[CheckerHater]

Do you print your drawing on actual paper? Do you have both American and ISO sizes readily available?

 

[JNieman]

I don't know about your plotters, but the HP I used at my last place of employment readily accepted 34" rolls as well as 36".

Have you verified that these large format plotters /cannot/ use metric sheet sizes? Starting with that may yield the question moot. I know it's not the answer to the question you asked, so I apologize for what may be a tangent, but it seemed like one of those "forest for the trees" questions that often gets missed.

_________________________________________
Engineer, Precision Manufacturing Job Shop
Tool & Die, Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Agricultural, Firearms

NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD LT, Autocad Plant 3D 2013, Enovia DMUv5

 

[ctopher]

I have added the metric tol block and simply crossed out the standard tol block, no format change.
This was acceptable with our gov/aerospace/FAA customers.

Chris, CSWA
SolidWorks 14
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[jeff97070]

Thank you for the replies. What I'm getting most out of the powers to be here is that the 8 year project parts were done over seas and they wanted metric formats while the new project is being built here is the USA so the english inch formats are the request just the internal everything is to say metric.

After 30 years this request first threw me but now so be it.

Thank you all,

 

[KENAT]

What's the problem with drawings that use mm as the unit on inch drawing size formats?

So long as all issues related to metric v inch are addressed I'm not seeing any issue.

Similar to ctopher, if we occasionally need to do a metric drawing (such as optics many of which are metric) we just tweak the tol block or cross it out & replace.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[juergenwt]

Sorry to say you are working for some very uninformed people. The first time you will see this will be when you scale a drawing up or down from one size to another. A0 to A1 to A2 to A3 to A4 or even A5 - no problem.
When you do this between the B,C,D and E format it will not work. You may not be able to transfer the complete print. That is why printers love the ISO "A" size.

 

[juergenwt]

Here is a good explanation why you should go with "A" size paper. However, I think your bosses most likely will not agree.

http://betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/a4-vs-us-letter/

 

[MikeHalloran]

Star for juergenwt.

Very nice paper that describes and explains annoyances that I never got annoyed enough to analyze.

I think all my printers can handle A4 paper.
Perhaps I shall buy some if it ever appears here in USA.

I don't look forward to explaining all that to the wife.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[CheckerHater]

Another question to jeff: are your bosses planning to use engineering or architectural "inch" sizes?

 

[dgallup]

The one good thing about inch A,B,C,D & E sizes is that you can fold them all down to A size (not accounting for the slight offset due to thickness). You can not do that with metric sheets. Not as big a problem as it used to be since hardly anyone walks around with a stack of blueprints anymore. The nice thing about ISO metric sizes is they all have the same aspect ratio which juergenwt pointed out.

That being said, we only use metric sheet sizes no matter what units the parts are designed in. We mainly use A3 & A2 because anything bigger becomes unreadable when the boss prints it out on A size paper. Large format printers work equally well with any size drawing.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[swertel]

This is a really long conversation considering that paper size has absolutely nothing to do with the part defined on it.

--Scott
www.wertel.pro

 

[KENAT]

Yep, definite case of first world problems if this is the biggest woe you have at your employer.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[JNieman]

I'm with swertel.

Do people still worry about plotting paper sheets 'to scale' and being able to measure off it? Really? It's 2014 right?





_________________________________________
Engineer, Precision Manufacturing Job Shop
Tool & Die, Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Agricultural, Firearms

NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD LT, Autocad Plant 3D 2013, Enovia DMUv5

 

[ctopher]

I agree. Should never scale off of a dwg from a printer. A plotter is more accurate, but the use of plotters is dwindling.

Chris, CSWA
SolidWorks 14
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[CheckerHater]

@dgallup:
Could you please elaborate on how exactly you CANNOT fold metric sheet down to A4?

 

[jeff97070]

The answer is engineering "inch" sizes.

For the last 10 years we make drawings never to be scaled and only put critical requirements on them and off they go to the vendor along with the cad model. This time things are different and the plotting part was through me off for as mentioned all the vendors use the cad model. Long and short I appreciate your feedback and it's another day.

 

[dgallup]

Checkerhater.

I just looked at the ISO paper sizes and they SHOULD fold down like the inch sizes as each size is exactly twice as big as the previous size. However, when I lived & worked in France and used their formats (I never double checked what they had set up) the sheets definitely would not fold up into a nice stack, they all ended up different. Maybe they had set the inside of the drawing formats to the ISO sizes, I don't know. It really does not matter anymore as noted above, nobody prints to actual size anymore.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[juergenwt]

Jeff - a few more questions to be answered. How do you store your prints? Do you store them in cabinets designed for American print sizes? How do you store your "A" size prints? Cabinets for Metric print sizes?
Are you sending American print sizes overseas? Most likely people in the rest of the world will have cabinets to store "A" size prints. Also their copying machines most likely will have no way to adjust to American sizes since American paper sizes are not used in most of the world. I have gone thru a massive transfer program and the worst mistake we made (in the beginning) was to try to convert print sizes to our size. Turned out to be a big headache.