SWX 2D Drawing Tips? 1

[MadMango]

I'm wondering if anyone has some good SLDDRW tips for reducing 2d file size. Part of my group is detailing an assembly with 150-200 parts (including hardware). The Assy Drawing is exploded, and has item bubbles, BoM and centerlines for assembly guides.

The 2 sheet drawing is coming in at 9.3gb, and it is taxing the computer's resources. It's a Dell Precision 620 with 1g memory. The natives are getting restless, and they are on the verge of saving the drawing as a .DWG and doing it in AutoCad 2000. They are using SWX2001, SP5.

Thanks all.
"Happy the Hare at morning for she is ignorant to the Hunter's waking thoughts."

 

[Stoker]

Hello Ken,

Re. library parts - I understand that you had a full library of parts created in AutoCAD, but from the sound of your post the SWX library was not complete. It is difficult for many companies to spare engineering time to create one when they convert to a 3D modeller. I think this is an excellent opportunity to hire a student from a local college or university for a semester or two. You get the work done for less than it would cost to pay an engineer and the student gains valuable work experience. In order to get the greatest benefit from library parts they should be set up with mate references so that they automatically get mated when they are inserted into the assembly. I find that using hotkeys allows me to mate faster than by using the feature manager. If you need help creating a mating macro, you can download some samples at

http://www.frontiernet.net/~mlombard/

Re. your point 3 - when using simplified configurations, the parts which are not required should be suppressed, not hidden. When a part is hidden you will see a slight performance gain because the component does not have to be displayed. However, the software still solves the part. When you suppress a part it is completely ignored - no repainting, no solving mates, no solving equations. Suppressing is the way to get the best reduction in rebuild times.

Re. your point 5 - I have found that creating two different versions of purchased parts (a simple version and a realistic version) is just too complicated and confusing in a multi-user environment. I just put in enough detail to ensure that the part will be understood, but try to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary, cosmetic features such as fillets, threads etc. I will model most purchased components as single parts, even when they are assemblies. If it comes in the door as one solid piece it is modelled as a part, which reduces the file size and load time.

For suppressing non-critical parts, the place to start is with components that are not seen, either because they will not be visible due to the angle of the drawing view or because they are enclosed. In large assemblies it may be easier to use envelope parts to accomplish this.

As far as exploded views go, I think the new explode lines work really well. It is very easy to generate them and they make the assembly drawing much easier to understand, especially when you are showing a lot of parts being assembled. I have found that once the exploded view is created, quite often the lines need to go from one end of the screen all the way to the other. I usually use the split bar and create two windows. In this way you can be zoomed in to both parts at the same time so that it is easy to pick out the edges which define the start and end of the routed explode lines.

For dealing with changes in design intent, I try to delay working on drawings until the parts are ready for production. This minimizes the lost work when major redesign is required. You say its easier to deal with this in 2D? When you change a 2D design you usually have to rearrange components three times - once in each of the views. Mistakes are far more likely in 2D.

There are a couple of other things which I have found to reduce load times:

1) Sketched text = evil. Many people use extruded text to create screen printing and labels. This should be avoided at all costs. Once the design is frozen, export the part to be printed at 1:1 dxf, import into a graphics package such as Illustrator and create the label there. You can then import the graphics file and show it in a sketch if you want to see it in the part, or better yet use PhotoWorks.

2) Always work in shaded mode. Graphics refresh quicker when working in color. Although I have not had a chance to do any comparisons, I do know that some people create and work in shaded drawing views and just switch to hidden lines removed before printing.

 

[RawheadRex]

Ken,

Having read and learned (with great interest) about your company's significant investment in AutoCAD automation I have to ask the question, why did you guys switch to SW at all? Forgive me for saying so but it sounds as though (and I certainly don't know the whole story) that this decision was force-fed to (at least some) users who were happy with 2D ACAD in the first place given the level of automation already existing. Also I'm curious what kind of training did users undergo and is there anyone in-house with prior experience switching a group from 2D to 3D design? It goes without saying growing 3D experience from within without prior knowledge or outside help is going to be more painful than having someone onboard who's "been there and done that."

Also it must have been clear in choosing to switch to SW that duplicating the level of automation existing in your ACAD setup was going to require significant effort. Not to mention have some kind of significant interim cost where productivity was concerned in comparison to ACAD. Was there a plan in place to mitigate this (i.e. phase in SW) and how or when did you plan on automating SolidWorks to extent of your ACAD installation? SW has a significantly greater amount of automation out-of-the box than ACAD but assuming you've captured many years of product/manufacturing knowledge and incorporated it into ACAD that's still clearly going to make for a decent amount of effort expended in order to transfer knowledge into the SW environment.

In any case, I have to take you to task on your rebuttal to Stoker's comment on designing faster in ACAD vs. SW. To be clear I want to let you know that before my entry into the world of 3D (ProE & SW) I was and still am an ACAD "black-belt." Even in the world of "one-off" designs, major changes in design intent are faster in 3D and less prone to errors than 2D I've found (as I suspect a large majority of others have as well). And, with proper understanding of modelling techniques working in 3D you can double the number of iterations in a given amount of time. I can't tell you how many times I've had to "add a part in the middle of a big jumble of parts" because it was deemed necessary and in each and every case I can honestly say hands down 3D was and is faster.

Tools are available to you in SW that make things go faster. However the one that I've found most helpful is "on the fly" sub-assembly management (this allows for moving components in, out, and between sub-assemblies with minimal impact on mate definitions) and in-context part design (allows for you to "add a part in the middle of a big jumble of parts" just as easily as AutoCAD).

Obviously I'm speaking in generalities here without seeing specifically an example of how you arrived at the conclusions about changes in design intent. But the bottom line is (and I think you'd have to admit this much) many companies design groups are working quite well and accomplishing much with SW. It stands to reason that your group can as well, in my opinion.

 

[brengine]

Stoker,

Sorry for the long delay, (but I expected this reply to take awhile).

Re: Library Parts
We do have people working on those in between projects, and have had interns on it here and there for a few weeks at a time. But it would take a LARGE commitment in time (and more importantly $$$) to really make a dent in getting enough drawn to match what we already have available.

Re: “Hotkeys”
Use them all the time. Don’t really care for having “mating” hotkeys tho. Half the time it gives me Aligned when I want Anti-Aligned. Since I usually know which one I want (Aligned or Anti), I just choose the one I want and Accept it (don’t bother with the “Preview”).
-I REALLY like them for Sketch Constraints. I use [Shift]+a key for all of my Sketching hotkeys (Vertical, Horizontal, Collinear, Concentric, etc…)

Still looking to try out Suppressing some parts.

Couldn’t figure out how to turn the Explode Lines on.

Re: Starting 2D to soon
I put it off until the last possible moment (for parts and assemblies).

Re: Dealing with Design Intent.
Yes 2D means changing 3 views and manually changing recreating holes and related features, but 3D requires all this as well as probably having to draw (more) parts not in our library, and redefining/making new mates which takes longer than repositioning in 2D.

Re: Shaded views, no Wireframes or HLR.
I do this in Drawings as well. Mainly b/c it’s easier to tell parts apart (for both me and the assembly guys). In AutoCad, all parts are different colors (as much as possible) and plotted in Color as well. The assembly guys also prefer the AutoCad drawings and say they are much more easier to work with too b/c of the automation in there that we haven’t gotten SW Drawings to match yet, and believe me we’ve tried.

*******************
Anyone know how to automate the customization of balloon numbers to match a part of the filename or a standard File Property?
*******************

I’m still chugging away here trying to make this work and really appreciate all your input.
Ken

 

[brengine]

RawheadRex,

Sorry for the delay, this’ll be a long reply too.

Re: Why did you guys switch to SW at all?
It seems like the logical progression, plus there are the other benefits of 3D.
-Easier for the others/customer to look at/comprehend.
-3D model for CAM use
-PDM possibilities (tracking/releasing comparable parts, parts database)
-Easier to draw complex parts.

Re: Decision was force-fed
Not at all. All of the designers want to use SW (we’ve all got it on our Resume’s now too).

Re: Training
We have a dedicated in-house guy. He does the training and all the SW programming. He did much of the automation in AutoCad. Very sharp, tho I don’t know if he has any 3D experience outside of the training he has received since the whole SW ordeal started. I doubt there is much that he isn’t experienced with (2D or 3D) for our product line, Industrial Automation and Integration.

Re: SW Phase-In
Expected some time for SW to reach our AutoCad automation level. Been phasing it in for about the last 2 years. Right now, we have about half our dept. trained/running both SW and AutoCad (about 12 of 23). We have continued to process AutoCad jobs while separately running SW jobs.
-We’ve just reached the “after all the time we’ve put into this SW project and we’re more behind now than when we started” point.

Re: sub-assembly management (this allows for moving components in, out, and between sub-assemblies with minimal impact on mate definitions)
-Isn’t this only possible if the component part(s) you are moving in-and-out were created from the SAME part? Otherwise the mates and in-context relations won’t transfer from one iteration to the next? Right?

Re: SW comments
I AGREE with your comments. I also agree that it WOULD work. Your reasoning/rational ARE many of the reasons FOR our switch. BUT it just can’t compete with our EXISTING system/standards. YES there are hard heads resistant to change, but there complaints and the complaints of others FOR SW are justified. It would be no contest for ANY 3D package if we didn’t have the automation in AutoCad that we do. The designers prefer SW except for the Large Assembly and Drawing speed issues, and time it takes during design changes.

Here’s the complaints I here/see:
-Computers too slow opening/manipuating/saving large (most) assemblies and ALL assembly drawings.
---Running Dell 2.0GHz, 768MB RAM, Nvidia Quadro Video (64MB I think?)
-Can’t seem to match the existing AutoCad automation.
-Drawings not laid out as well as our AutoCad style.
---COMPUTER TOO SLOW.
---Exploded Views to slow/hard to work with.
---BoM generation won’t match our standard. SW’s BoM is nice, but not what we want.
---Harder for Assy. Guys to read/understand even if we spend 2X the time on the SW Drawing as the AutoCad Assy. drawing. Can’t justify spending even more time than that?
-Design time (and design change time) literally 25-50% slower in SW.
-Machine build time slower as well.
-Spend more time creating configurations/mates/relations, when in AutoCad we just Copy/Paste and change a Layer. And/or run the AutoCad “Hole Wizard”.

Possibilities:
-It’s not a lack of commitment. We have put much time (and $$$) into SW customization and PDM customization.
-I guess that our existing system and our “one-off”product line just don’t mix with change (including to the 3D world). I don’t understand why we aren’t seeing the benefits that SW (or 3D in general) offer.
-Maybe our expected level of design confidence is a good enough trade-off for faster design speed? So we’re settling for good enough….I just don’t know??

Thanks for your time and input, I’ll be sure to pass your views along,
Ken

 

[MadMango]

Ken,

Look at it in this basic way: You have a new tool (3D CAD), so you're going to have to make some changes to the way it is implemented (change your company standards a bit).

You can't use a screwdriver like a hammer and expect optimum results until you change the way you work and start using the screwdriver as a screwdriver. I like analogies, sorry. = )

There are a lot of hidden costs involved with switching over from 2D to 3D. One of the biggest costs in hardware and network upgrades. Your IT Department might/should look into setting up your Engineering Department on thier own switch if they haven't done so yet.

We had some speed concerns in the early days ('97-'99) but those have all been fixed now. Currently, my company operates with the master assy on the network, nothing is done on the local drives. We work with assamblies with about 1500 parts, weighing in around 8-10mb. We used to have to wait 15 minutes for this to open across our network, but have brought this down closer to 4 minutes.

As for your comments about your assembly guys having a harder time understanding your SW drawings, I'm confused about this. How are your AutoCAD drawings so different from your SW drawings as to cause this confusion?

The hardest part our users had to deal with was to learn to stop trying to make SW work like AutoCAD. After they began to use SW as SW, things went much smoother. Now, if we could get Simplex Text in SW, yoiu wouldn't be able to tell our SW drawings from our old AutoCAD drawings. "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[brengine]

MadMango,

Re: "Now, if we could get Simplex Text in SW, yoiu wouldn't be able to tell our SW drawings from our old AutoCAD drawings. "

-Do you know how to make lines in a SW drawing different colors (say, each part have it's own color)? 1500 parts all shown in black is hard to differentiate between, but working in shaded has helped the Assy. guys out too. It's more the time involved to GENERATE the drawing in SW that is causing the problems...designers taking shortcuts or skipping steps to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. With our AutoCad setup these steps aren't skipped and the resultant drawing gets done faster.

Ken

 

[MadMango]

I can see your problem with that. I haven't worked with "colored drawings" since AutoCAD r12-13 days with a pen plotter. = )

We've almost always plotted things in black only, just providing more isometric exploded views to help assembly (which are very easy to create in SW). I haven't had the need to investigate the use of Layers in SW, but this sounds like that might help you. I think you can assign different colors to specific layers. Sounds like you might have to assign individual parts (or subassys) to specific layers to get it to work (just a hunch, like I said, I've never used SW layers). "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[brengine]

Layers in SW drawings are a major pain. Tried that, but it wasn't as "easy" as I thought it would be. Don't remember any color options, but it's been a while and I didn't spend too much time on it.

Do you usually display your drawings in Wireframes, HLR, or Shaded?

Do you make multiple Exploded Views, or just multiple (isometric) views from different angles of the same exploded view?

 

[MadMango]

To answer your questions, Yes.

We use HLR for assembly drawings, sometimes adding a shaded view strictly for a "this is what it should look like when you're finished" view.

We make different configurations with seperate exploded views, and make multiple views of the same exploded view from different angles (mostly configs of different exploded views). "The attempt and not the deed confounds us."

 

[Stoker]

Hello Ken,

"Couldn’t figure out how to turn the Explode Lines on."
- This is done after the view has been exploded. Turn on the routing toolbar and select new explode line sketch. This will turn on the "route line" tool, which will allow you to select the items at the start and end of each explode line. After you select an item (a circular edge for example) a small arrow will appear showing you which way the explode line will go. You can click on the arrow to reverse the direction. There are more detailed instructions in the help under exploded views. This tool is new in SWX2001+. Are you using an older version?

"Anyone know how to automate the customization of balloon numbers to match a part of the filename or a standard File Property?"
- the answer is in the FAQ's

 

[brengine]

SW FAQ's? Do you have a link?

 

[SBaugh]

The FAQ's are Located by clicking on the Tab. The Tab is located when you first enter this SW Forum.

You will see "Forum", "Keyword Search", "FAQ", "Links"

IHTH, Scott Baugh, CSWP
credence69@REMOVEhotmail.com

http://www.3dmca.com

http://home.insightbb.com/~scott.baugh/

*When in doubt always check the help*

 

[brengine]

Does this sound typical?

My assembly has about 200-250 parts in it. Some parts are right under that assembly but most spread out in subassemblies and multiple nested subassemblies. It takes around 3-5 minutes to open the 15MB whatever.sldasm file. Looking at the Task Manager shows that SW is using ~450MB. The 9MB whatever.slddrw takes AT LEAST 2-4 times longer. It has 3 normal views and an isometric view (all shown in Shaded mode). The Task Manager shows that SW is again using ~450MB.

Immediately after opening the whatever.slddrw, after waiting all that time to load the assembly/component part data, the Cross-hatches show up over everything and I have to Rebuild before I can do anything. Then, when I save I often get prompted that the Assy. needs to be rebuilt before saving (so I answer Yes). At the completeion of the save, the Cross-hatches pop back up over everything and I have to Rebuild it (and wait) again.

Just wondering if this sounds normal (both Task Manager stuff and Drawing actions) to everyone else out there?

Thanks,
Ken