What the big guys use?

[solidmecman]

I did a search in the forum and found a couple of threads from a few years ago talking about how Boeing using Catia, etc. I was wondering if any of this has changed with the latest versions of Solidworks. I was always curious as to what the big guys like Boeing, Airbus, all the big car companies, Nasa, our government, etc. uses for their engineering departments. I was watching a discover channel show about a month back where they were showing the building of the new Airbus A380 plane and there were some seens of the engineers working on their computers with a 3d model of the actual plane but I couldn't tell what software they were using, in any event, those have got to be some HUGE assembly files.

 

[ewh]

It would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with ASME Y14.5. Understanding GD&T is an important skill for mechanical design. If you have any questions about the standard, try the Drafting Standards and GD&T forum. Good luck!

 

[solidmecman]

is ASME Y14.5 a standard or book?

 

[ewh]

It is a standard that is a book. The title is Dimensioning and Tolerancing. Another good one to become familiar with (though it has not yet been widely adopted) is ASME Y14.41 Digital Product Definition Data Practices.

 

[Heckler]

solidmecman,

What is your technical background? Do you have a two year technical degree in drafting, are you a degreed engineer or are you self taught?

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford

 

[solidmecman]

Heckler, I am a degreed software engineer. I have been self-teaching myself in Solidworks and using it to draw pretty simplistic parts for my own business to have my machinist make.

 

[Heckler]

I would suggest getting a mechanical drawing book, and a copy of ASME Y14.5 (or a ASME Y14.5 work book) along with understanding SWx. This should enable you to create sound mechanical drawings thus resulting in your design intent being communicated effectively to your machinist. Make note that if tolerances are not well thought out and applied the results will be parts that cost more then they should. Also, if your intent is to design something to make money I would consider hiring a mechanical engineer to QA the design for manufactureability (DFM). Best of luck

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford

 

[wgchere]

well it seems that the drafting is something that is now automatically done for you, look at solidworks, you build a parametric model, and then it creates a 2d drafting drawing for you, so I assume one day everything will be done in 3d and then the software will MAKE the 2d drafting (drawing) for you.

Parametric drafting programs draft as well as Word's grammar checker writes sentences. Well, actually, they draft worse. But if one knows little about English grammar one might think that Word has now made learning the rules of English grammar a thing of the past.

As has been pointed out already, drafting is more that putting dimensions on a drawing. As far as the automatic drafting goes, if you didn't make the dimension in the model, it won't be on the drawing.

Take the same part and make two drawings, one drafted well, and one drafted poorly. The bad drafting may take several hours to interpret correctly, while the good drafting may only take 15 or 20 minutes. Over the life of the drawing hundreds or thousands of man-hours may be lost trying to interpret the bad drawing. That costs money and wastes time, and will be reflected in any quote for manufacture.

Drafting is a skill and an art, and like most skills takes practice to master and become efficient.

 

[wes616]

I can see both capturing all engineering with the exception of Arch, that is where ADesk has the market.

Well i know this is from like 40 posts ago, but just thought i'd let you know, that a number of the bigger modern arch firms are switching to CATIA. Ghery has been using it for years now.. and a number of others are starting to follow.

Ben,

Congrats on the new job.. Which L3 are you at? Waco?



Wes C.
------------------------------
When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions...

 

[looslib]

wes616,
Yes, I am in Waco supportting the Wildfire/PDMLink implementation. Same thing I did for IR. More challenges here, as they did the installation and configuration by themselves. They did a fantastic job considering they had no PDM consultants when compared to what IR paid to PTC in consulting charges in 2005 for the 2 sites that were setup. There are things that L-3 did not implement that I would have done, but it does the job they wanted it to do.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
"Fixed in the next release" should replace "Product First" as the PTC slogan.

Ben Loosli
Sr IS Technologist
L-3 Communications

 

[smcadman]

This thread is all over the place... like it's "yahoo messenger" or something

I would recommend "Fundamentals of Graphics Communication" by Gary Bertoline because it covers 3D principles, correct drawing/drafting practices, and ANSI standards.
You can pay several hundred for a book on ASME standards, but many companies use "company standards".

We started with ANSI standards as our base, but modified it for our company. We only use A and B size sheets (8.5 x 11, 11 x 17), so we modified the text height on dims to .094, our arrow tails are shorter, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/00...104-6012361-5831925?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Flores
SW06 SP2.0