Questions about text on a part techniques - file sizes

[oharag]

What's the best way to place text on a face of a solid?

What we are trying to do is show text that would be displayed on a solid part as an overlay (whether as a decal or direct print). There's a Text tool under sketch that allows for inputting text on a face. The problem with this method is that it only makes an outline of the text (it is not filled like normal text). A benfit of this method is that you can dimension to a point on the text string to locate it accurately. This method of placing text is for either extruding or cutting text into a part. If you choose not to create a feature out of this sketch it looks okay (except for it not being filled). If you leave it as a sketch it will display through all of the solids in the assembly. This is very annoying. Another negative with this extruded text is the file size of the part. One simple part got up to 10 MB!!!!! Text on it's own without extruding still was fairly large (1.3 MB).

If you select a face and under Insert\Annotations\Note you can place a note. But this is not on a face. The Note will spin around while rotating the part.

The other method I'm aware of is to Insert a Picture onto a face. This is great for complex graphics that have come from an illustrator application. The problem with this method is scaling. The graphic may come in too large. You can scale it using the resize points, but this also screws up the scale. Our overlay also has holes punched through it. You can do this on the solid part, but you can not punch holes thorugh a picture.

I also have a question on using Ecosqueeze. The example above concerning that 10MB file. It was a simple part with Text cut into the part. The file size balloned up to 10 MB. When I deleted the features, and left the text behind I saved the file. I thought the file would be much smaller. It turned out to be still 10MB. I couldn't believe this. So I decided to Ecosqueeze and the file shrunk to 1.3 MB. A significant savings. Why can't Solidworks clean up it's mess itself? Why do I have to use a third party app (that's not supported by Solidworks) to compress my files?

oharag

 

[CADGemini]

I have run into the same problem at the company I work for. I had to simulate a graphic that was being applied as a pad print. The only way I achieved this was by cutting the text into the surface. I cut into it about .005" and the file size increased alot. Then at the drawing end of things I used Hatch fill to color in the text. This also increased the file size and loading time of the file. I would be curious to know others thoughts on why third party apps are needed to reduce the file size.

Another thought:

What if the graphics were created as a seperate file in solidworks. This could be done by creating a surface and then cut-extrude the surface to the appearance of the graphic. Then insert that part into the assembly.

I wonder if the file size is the same or more?? I will try a test with this in mind and post my results.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. -Albert Einstein

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. -Albert Einstein

 

[MadMango]

If you are simulating silk screened or pad printed artwork, a simple work around is to only model the area or limits of the printed areas with a closed Split Line. You can then dimension the location to features of your model and provide a seperate drawing for the actual artwork.

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[J-C]

Using the first method of cut-extruding intot he face, you can color the letter faces to see it better.

We used a combination of cutting it on the model, and just regular text on a drawing view depending on what it was and how much text there was.

Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.

 

[SBaugh]

Text - Have you tired using the Wrap feature for your Text?

Picture - It's an OLE image How could SW solve this at a SW level? if you can figure this out then you should write your app and sell it to SW. MadMango makes a good point about this above.

Ecosqueeze - SW makes a shade file (THanks to M$) and this file is the biggest reason for the large file size. Ecosqueeze removes this file. Which in turn brings the file size down. This shade file is used in other areas so SW does not clean it up when the file is saved or closed.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

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