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Drawings Add Dimension vs Show Dimensions

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markborges

Mechanical
Nov 26, 2003
56
Hi All,

I have a customer who requests that all the dimensions be shown in the drawing and not added at the drawing level. Which is fine for most parts and it is nice for our customer to be able to change a part dimension from the drawing; however, often on castings or larger assembly drawings, I need to add dimensions and I usually create cosmetic sketches w/ the needed dimensions and then "show" these dimensions in the drawing.

This all takes alittle more time and these cosmetic sketch dimensions, are not parametric and, therfore, no different then just adding the dimensions on the drawing.

Does anyone else have similar requests from there customers?

My experience w/ dimensions on the drawing is that they sometime do not display on the screen and a refresh or change and change-back of the layer status will restore the dimensions. Does anyone else have the same problem and is there a fix to this?

Why else would the customer request this? I know I should ask them; but we have been going down this road for a while and....

What concerns me is that we are starting to make this practice standard for all of our customers and I do not see the merit of it. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks

Mark

Wildfire 2
 
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I always try to use shown model dimensions only. The advantage is the part and drawing dimensioning scheme & tolerancing are exactly the same. I also think it is much easier to predict changes when you modify a part, a lot fewer unintended consequences.

Shown dimensions also makes it much easier to be sure that the dimensioning scheme has the correct number of dimensions sufficient to constrain the part without over dimensioning. Many times when I see someone just show views and add dimensions there are either too many or not enough dimensions.

I don't really see why you need to add cosmetic sketches. Also, any additional dimensions just added for clarification should be reference dimensions. I have no problem adding those in a drawing.

I have never had a problem with shown dimensions disappearing of being affected by layer status but there are a lot of config options that I worked out years ago and tied down so Pro/E always works the way I expect it to.
 
Yes, I agree, shownin dimensions is the best way to do it; but in some cases; castings w/ complex geometry, or large assemblies, a dimension here and there is required. (I agree this can be fixed w/ some remodeling; but, sometimes the remodeling can be quite extensive. To "show" these dimensions our customer requests us to make cosmetic sketchs or add reference dimensions in the model sketchs and show them.

This is the meat of my question. What is the advantage of having nonparametric dimensions come from the model when they can easily be added to the drawing.

Thanks,

Mark
 
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