Engineering drawing print/release/database system.

[bill8123]

Hi Guys,

I'm looking at updating our current drawing print/release/database system.

We currently physically print drawings from ProE, stamp, sign the drawings by hand, re-scan and upload to a web based system. Then for some drawings, save every sheet as a dxf and upload that as well. Its an inefficient process.

I’m thinking that there must be some software that enables you to hit a button in ProE, which prints the whole drawing to pdf or tiff and then sends a notification to the checker for approval. Once he approves the drawing, it then automatically gets uploaded to a database with some sort of digital signature.

Anybody know of some software that can help us out?

Thanks

 

[CoryPad]

Do a search for PLM

 

[dwallace1971]

What about Pre/E's Windchill/ProIntralink tool?

"On the human scale, the laws of Newtonian Physics are non-negotiable"

 

[mcgyvr]

I simply print to PDF then I digitally sign it (stamp actually) with Adobe acrobat.

You could easily just print to PDF and save it in one specific "waiting for approval" folder that your "checker" could routinely "check" and digitally sign and save it to the web based system.

 

[mcgyvr]

Not sure what "macro/vb" stuff pro-e has but with my cad software (Autodesk Inventor) its very easy to automatically print to pdf and export a dxf each time I hit save or just have a single button to do that,etc..

 

[geesamand]

We configured Pro/E to save to Tiff and then made that into a printer configuration. Then it's a simple matter of importing the TIFF into the drawing storage database system. No 3rd party software required to generate the TIFF. Because we're printing directly from Pro/E the lineweight and other typical issues are never a problem.

We do the same for our other CAD programs but use a 3rd party tiff printer utility.

 

[Walterke]

Just wait for JohnRbaker to come and promote teamcenter. (or google it)

NX 7.5.5.4 with Teamcenter 8 on win7 64
Intel Xeon @3.2GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro 2000

 

[Cockroach]

Yes, I upgraded ProE to SolidWorks. That software took care of the issues you raised and solved a lot more problems than I had experienced to date. Perhaps you need a friendlier software package and support group who actually care about the end user. ProE boys just want to sell you the software package, they have third party agents that support and provide technical assistance to the end user. And that can be highly frustrating.

Regards,
Cockroach

 

[geesamand]

"What about Pre/E's Windchill/ProIntralink tool?"

These tools are a major investment. They consume cash, hardware, administrator time, and most of all, user time. They are geared toward storing/controlling all Pro/E data files, not just drawings, and therefore they affect productivity and workflow for everything anyone does in Pro/E. If that's not what you're looking for then look elsewhere. In other words, I would never install one of these systems just to assist with how your drawing files are stored.

Our company needs revision control of the drawings only. And by "drawings" it need not (nor IMO should it be) the Pro/E .drw files. So we convert the drawings to tiff and store in the company document storage system.

 

[dwallace1971]

geesamand,
How do you control the revision of the Pro/E models and other data? Do the models not drive the drawings?

"On the human scale, the laws of Newtonian Physics are non-negotiable"

 

[geesamand]

The models drive the drawings, but it's the responsibility of the drafter to ensure that the models come through accurately with each revision.

We store the model files and pro/e drawing files on place on the network, only accessible to the engineering team. We organize the files in a sensible way and they regenerate fairly consistently.** They are not revision controlled technically speaking. The initials of the drafter, checker, and approver and entered digitally on the format.

The tiff files are the revision controlled entities. (We occasionally publish IGES and DXF files too) The rest of the company see only the TIFF, IGES, and DXF files. The official approvals on new releases and drawing revisions are collected via the electronic ECN system.

** This system saves us the hassle of managing an all-inclusive PDM system. The tradeoff is that we must take care to not have two people revising the same Pro/E files at the same time and the users must self-police and avoid litter files and disorganization among the Pro/E files. Not all organizations can live with this tradeoff, but we can. One of the major benefits is that I can call up an entire assembly with 300 parts from the network drive in seconds where a PDM system would take minutes, maybe more than an hour. We also don't get into the extra layer of bugs and incompatibility when you try to implement the full range of Pro/E parametricity in a PDM system. We can open a file, make a change, and release a drawing revision in a few minutes where with a PDM system we'd only be viewing the file in that time.

As to the question of macros, yes Pro/E supports them and you could probably do most release tasks semi-automatically using macros. We just happened to find that File->Print->(Tiff printer) is quite fast and less complex to manage than a macro performing the same task.

David