First angle vs third angle projection

[DiegoLGraves]

Our company is beginning to work with a customer who's drawings use first angle projection. For our shop and suppliers we will supply drawings with third angle projection. I'd like to make it easy for myself and others here to create and verify their drawings using first angle projected views, then switch to third angle for release to our shop and suppliers. I expect after verification and switching to third angle there will be some drawing realignment needed.

This first thing I noticed is that when switching projection types named views do not update, only projected views. This makes sense so I can set this up and instruct the others to only use projected views.

I am wondering if any of you know of a property I can add to the sheet that will update the first angle and third angle symbol display (I still need to create the symbol files.) Or if any of you have a macro that would update the symbol?

I have cross posted this on SolidWorks forums. I appreciate your help. Thanks, Diego

 

[Nella95]

-have the same question - been doing it manually for years - depending on who my drawings are going to - but if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, a macro would certainly help...

SW Professional 2015 SP 5.0
SW Electrical 2D/3D SP 5.0
64 bit
Intel Xeon X(R) CPU 3600 @ 2.80 GHz
8.0 GB of RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 2000

 

[GRF]

Ignore this answer as it missed the point of the question.

Just make a template for 1st angle drawings and a 3rd angle drawing. I am assuming you know how to set a drawing as 1st angle and 3rd angle under properties.

 

[Jboggs]

I feel your pain my friend. One of my past jobs was for a company that was building a machine tool in the US based on license agreements with the original German manufacturer. We assembled parts made for us by local shops from our drawings. Our job in engineering was to create "Amercanized" versions of the German drawings. (This was in the olden days - pre-CAD.) I cannot tell you how many parts came in that simply did not work. They were exact mirror images of what we really wanted. And were made exactly to our incorrect drawing. No matter how hard you try to eliminate it, human error will find a way to break through, like water in a faulty dam. I will tell you this - you better have a robust and thorough checking system! Also, engineers, as all humans do, have a way of seeing what they WANT to see, not what is really there. This is a case where the phrase "new eyes" will have a special value! Good luck!

 

[MikeHalloran]

ISTR that in SW, you get the projection symbols for free by selecting ANSI or ISO drawing templates.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[DiegoLGraves]

I have the symbols as blocks from SW2003, but I haven't found a sheet property $prp for the projection type that I can link to, to have the symbols magically switch when the projection type is switched. Requests for doing this go back at least to 2005 with no solutions that update automatically.

It occurs to me now that the simpler approach is to just set up 1st and 3rd angle templates, then switch them back and forth when needed to verify the layouts. But when I try this it doesn't seem to update to projection type, even after reloading.

Thanks, Diego

 

[MikeHalloran]

I dimly remember occasionally starting a model with the wrong {1st|3rd}angle drawing template, and being frustrated by odd behaviors when trying to shove a different template in after the fact.

A lot of SW seemed to work perfectly, IF you did things in a linear manner, as if you knew where you were going and what route you were going to take, when you started, but SW fought back in strange ways if you wanted to back up partway and take a different path.
It was often easier, and faster, to just restart from scratch.


I think you have a valid complaint, in that real world design is not always a nice linear process, and these days (and 20+ years ago too), it would have been beneficial to select the drawing projection well after starting the model, and indeed to be able to generate two complete sets of drawings with different projections from the same model, for different markets.

Since SW is Euro-centric, or even Franco-centric, requests like that may be met with blank stares by the time they filter back to France, because chances are that the programmers working for Dassault have little or no experience with the 'Merican way of doing things, and chances also are that they look down on such practices as stupid and backwards and just too ancient and wrong to care about.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA