Electronic Redlining in SolidWorks?? 9

[evolDiesel]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to redline (mark up) a SolidWorks drawing electronically. Does anyone on here do red lines electronically? Is there a way to track changes (like in MS Word)? Would eDrawings be the best option for this?

Currently we use real red pens on real paper, but it's been suggested to me that this practice is archaic at best.

JL

Jack Lapham
Design Systems Engineer (E20)
Leupold & Stevens, Inc.

http://www.leupold.com

 

[fcsuper]

There's no way to redline with history within SolidWorks unless you use PDMWorks between individual redline iterations. If you do this, you can set up a layer on a drawing with the color red and set it to the default when the drawing is loaded. Or set up an annotation view for this purpose if within a model.

There is no way to actually track changes like in MS Word though.

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

 

[ShaggyPE]

I would recommend doing markups on pdfs while iterating the drawings between each set of markups. I have not used edrawings in a while, but my recollection is that it had pretty good markup funcitonality, not sure about the track changes though.

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional
Certified COSMOSWorks Designer Specialist
Certified SolidWorks Advanced Sheet Metal Specialist

 

[evolDiesel]

ShaggyPE,

When you say do the markups on PDFs, are you talking about electronic or by hand?

Jack

Jack Lapham
Design Systems Engineer (E20)
Leupold & Stevens, Inc.

http://www.leupold.com

 

[Eltron]

You can mark-up your drawings if you put them into eDrawings format.

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

Dan's Blog

 

[CADGemini]

Jack,

You would be able to achieve this using eDrawings and a file archive system such as PDMWorks. You would essentially have revisions of drawings, models, assemblies, and eDrawings in your folders. Of course the eDrawings would not be the same revision as the drawings, models, or assemblies but at least you would have the saved iterations of the red lines electronically.

I like Matt's approach as well by creating a layer on the drawing or annotation view.

I guess it is up to you and your company on how you want to interact with this type of process. If you have vendors outside that do not have SolidWorks but occasionally need to mark-up drawings I would try using the eDrawings method. Also if you had PDM Enterprise (PDMWorks on Steroids) this process could be built-in.

Best Regards,
Jon

Gemini CAD Solutions

http://www.geminicadworks.com

Challenges are what makes life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Solidworks 2007/2008

 

[macduff]

I would mark it up manually and then scan it as a PDF for history. It's easier that doing an electronic markup.

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

 

[smcadman]

It may be archaic but I prefer having a hard copy sitting in front of me to red-line.

I haven't used Edrawing but we have used PDF's to do mark-ups and comments.

Flores

 

[macduff]

It's easier than doing an electronic markup.

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

 

[evolDiesel]

CADGemini,

For what it's worth, we have PDMWorks Enterprise.

I prefer redlining a hard copy print myself, but I need to investigate this possibility.

It sounds like eDrawings is the most likely option so far.

Thanks for the responses you guys,

Jack

Jack Lapham
Design Systems Engineer (E20)
Leupold & Stevens, Inc.

http://www.leupold.com

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I haven't tried it (or even heard of it before) but this program redlines native SW drawings.

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/details.htm?company=Informative-Graphics&id=228&productid=112

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

There's also this;

http://labs.solidworks.com/Projects/BluePrintNow/

 

[AnnaWood]

I would add to the hand mark up hard copies, then scan as my preferred method. This is one area that going electronic is not necessarily the best approach.

I have done this in the past with suppliers and vendors. We upload the pdf scans into our DMS for history purposes.

Your mileage may vary....

Cheers,

Anna Wood
SW2008 SP5.0, Windows Vista SP1
IBM ThinkPad T61p, T7800, FX570M, 4 gigs of RAM

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[TheTick]

One more vote for manual redlining. Nothing like getting a print and pencil in hand. Seems like doing so engages different parts of the brain, and enhances the effect of looking from a fresh point of view.

 

[macduff]

Tick,
I'll toast to that! Cheers!

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2008 SP 4.0
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer

 

[Theophilus]

I much prefer the hardcopy version as well. Why scan it back in, except to more quickly send to a remote location? Having the hard copy on the desk, it doesn't take up screen space while correcting everything. Face it--it's simply faster to mark things up with pencil/pen and then to read from the print to make the edits to the model/drawing.

For non-overwhelming edits--just a thing or two at a time--I normally just do a screen capture of the area and annotate it. Sometimes sketching is required over the area to figure things out, so the snapshot can be printed and sketched upon or brought into something like Sketchbook Pro or Photoshop and drawn over (helps to have a Wacom tablet for this sort of thing).



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.