eDrawings and Solidworks Viewer question 1

[deek05]

I posted this on a couple other user groups, so you might have already seen this.

Here's the deal (this may be long): We use Autocad and Solidworks (SW). Drawings printed from Autocad and SW are considered MASTER drawings. Drawings printed anywhere else on plant (using a drawing viewer) need a time/date stamp saying "This Drawing Valid For 7 Days After: 8/3/2004, 11:14am". This is part of our ISO 9000 standards.

We currently use a program called Fastlook+. It's a good program but occasionaly there are some compatibility issues with SW. We would like to use eDrawings to view both Autocad and SW but need the time/date stamp.

I was able to print a time/date stamp using Solidworks Viewer, but I have to type in the stamp info in the custom header/footer settings everytime I print. Is it possible to get this custom header/footer text to stick? If I could get it to stick then I could change the front end of our drawing viewer to find anything with a .DWG extension to use
Autocad and anything with a .SLDDRW to use Solidworks Viewer.

Note, I did add the info to the custom header/footer to the SW drawing template. The problem is that the drawing printed from SW can't have the time/date stamp on it (see above).

Any ideas?

 

[ctopher]

Maybe try creating a block with text that is linked to the date. Don't have time today to try it, but may work.

 

[aamoroso]

We have had a similar situation but we had MCad and SW drawings to contend with. Then we started using outside drawings from ACAD. The trick for us was that we also needed to use the drawings in Multipunch (Strippits CAM Program) and all of our computers outside of engineering are Macs. Our solution was to DXF everything to same DXF format and use a single viewer. The nice part was that we can work on SW drawings and update a family of parts before the shop would see an "across the board" change. This allowed us to update several configurations of a part and then release the change all at once becasue the DXF files wont be updated until we have all the modeling and drawings complete.

 

[slorandy]

I'm very interested in the same type of solution but prefer something permanent. Although selecting a footer in the print dialog of SW works, it requires being set each time a drawing is printed. By default I want to print drawings with the time and a more detailed file name.

 

[SBaugh]

You all have to remember this two apps are only viewers. They are only going to view what the file is showing. if you want something permanent then your going to have to add it to the file directly. With SW drawings you can add a Block like ctopher suggested. With DXF your going to have to add something directly to that file too. Then when you print out the file, you will have your watermark

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

If you are in the SW Forum Check out the FAQ section

To make the Best of Eng-Tips Forums FAQ731-376

 

[CableProWire]

aamoroso

wrt to multipunch, do you have any documentation (manual) on the software?

thanks