Hyperlink from balloons or BOM in assembly to component drawings -How?

[driesvervoort]

Hello,

I work as a mechanical engineer at a company that produces and distributes heating radiators.
Our design department would like to distribute the drawings of our product library to select members of staff within our organization. We have a lot of drawings with many variations of radiator assemblies (varying thickness, number of steel panels, different dressings etc.).

The basic idea of what we want to do is to link each assembly drawing to its constituent components' drawings in a format that is accessible to non-SolidWorks users (f.i. a PDF with hyperlinks). We want to implement fast and easy access to our entire product library (including fittings, pipework, etc.), starting from assembly drawings of complete radiators.
We would like to know if the process of linking balloons and/or BOM entries within assembly drawings to part drawings can be automated (thus not having to edit each individual assembly's PDF drawing to make the hyperlinks manually in f.i. Adobe InDesign).

All of our parts, assemblies and drawings are located in the same directory. The filename of each part/assembly and its accompanying drawing is always the same.

How can we generate assembly drawings with hyperlinks to component drawings embedded in balloons or the BOM from within SolidWorks? How can this be done in a file format that is accessible for non-SOlidWorks users? Is this something that SolidWorks can do out-of-the-box or does this require additional add-ins, modules, custom macro code?

Your help is very welcome!

Note: I composed a tiny scheme to help visualize the scenario of what we are trying to do.

greetings,
Dries

 

[SnowCrash]

e-drawings doesn't do it for you?


--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2010 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580

 

[gwubs]

Hi Dries,
We do something like what you want in terms of non SW users being able to access drawings. First, we use numbered filenames, for example 12345.sldprt, for which the drawing number is 12345.slddrw, saved in a numbered folder named "SW 12300-12399". Then to make drawings accessable to others (release) we PDF the drawing, and store it in a shared folder using the same naming convention - 12345.pdf. When drawings get rev'd, we make a pdf of the latest rev, and move the previous rev to an archive in its containg folder. The SW drawing is always kept at the current rev level. This number "12345" is also the part number we can etch, stamp or write on the parts (and Assemblies) for the receiver right through to the fitter. The part number is the drawing number. This works great! We have used this system for 10 years, and it shows no sign of being dead end. The numbers are simply "next number" from an Excel file registry. I'd be glad to elaborate if you are interested.

 

[jassco]

Hi, Dries:

You are talking about PDM or PLM automation.

SolidWorks can not do what you need out-of-the-box. If you implement a PDM system, it can be customized to do what you need. Alternatively, if you are familiar with database and API programming, you can create one to do what you need. You can use either e-drawing or pdf format.

I have my system that can do similar things and much more. But it is lots of programming though. You need to build yours unless you want to invest in a PDM or PLM system.

Good luck!

 

[applejack2]

as a workaround, you could create an excel file with the bill of materials, generated from solidworks. you'd also need to use a naming scheme like gwubs described above where solidworks part files are the same filename as the drawings (and .pdf's).

column A:item number
column B:quantity
column Cart number
column D:description
then add column E: =HYPERLINK(CONCATENATE(C1,".pdf"),"click here for pdf")

so each assembly PDF would have a separate excel file accompanying it.

 

[DiegoLGraves]

Dries, we do something like this. We have a (mostly) paperless shop. All the routings and prints are accessed using links in our business software, JobBOSS. We scan prints to tif format, then link them in the JobBOSS routing. Anyone in the company can then view the prints by clicking the link. The tif's are stored on the network so purchasing can also email them to vendors. It's made it easy to access prints by everyone without having to find paper copies, and made it very easy to do revisions.

Regards, Diego