【转帖】draftsman - the automatic drawing creator

yang686526

draftsman - the automatic drawing creator
my next big project is titled draftsman; this tool will in short create drawings from parts/assemblies in single or batch, run directly within solidworks, and be highly customizable.
unlike other tools at the moment this one will learn from the user how the drawing should be so that it can create very accurate drawings with or without dimensions, with views where you want them, using any template you add.
to read more and leave your comments and suggestions
luke,
this is a major undertaking. many variables in drawing layouts even if stored in a pre-created template. this will be a godsend to engineers if you pull this off, which i hope you do. though this may decrease the need for a drafter. been in the cadcam field since 1984 and this has always been a thorn. you have my vote!!
cadcam systems analyst
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well under way now.
i am currently making the template designer; at present it handles all views including flat and iso, projected views from any other view, alignment, boms from views with templates applied etc... positioning, auto-balooning....
my first question for you guys is how would you like section views to be handled in terms of the positioning of the cut on the primary view? with every drawing that is created the model used will result in a completely different view, so the position of a section cannot be pre-determined. i am thinking positioning it as a percentage from the bounding box but what would you like?
at the end of the day i don't think this will matter too much because it will be floating anyway so the user can just drag the cut line to the desired position.
how will you know which part/assy will require a section? if you check off in your dialog/form for section, will it ask you to select the part/assy in model and what part/assy in the tree/model view window and what surface that the section will be co-planer to?
cadcam systems analyst
-solidworks office premium 2009 sp3.0
-solidworks simulation premium 2009 sp3.0
-solidworks flow simulation 2009 sp3.0
-2 cpu (fx-62), 2.0 gb of ram
-window xp pro sp2
-nvidia geforce 7950 gx2 (512mb) 6.14.11.6921
well at the moment it will create a drawing for a selected part or assembly, not say a drawing containing 2 parts.
as for the part to section, you don't actually select a component to section it is just a set of sketch entities, and whatever it intersects it sections. are you talking about something more advanced? if so please let me know and i can plan for that.
hi luke,
sounds pretty impressive. looking forward to seeing the finished article. if you need a beta testers, i'll volunteer.
personally the majority of my drawings, about 85-90%, are of weldments and sheetmetal parts so i use alot of relative views for weldments and of course flat pattern views for sheetmetal.
what is the anticipated timeline for release, be it, a beta or a release build.
declan.
p.s. - eating through the book, some good insight on items i was utilising improperly.
hi luke,
very intersted indeed! i make a lot of form drawings of sheetmetal parts and i have to put demensions on the views as well. so if you need a tester more than happy to try and give you an opinion
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ati firegl v7350
hay guys,
there is already a smart functionality available, it generates cutting (flat pattern 1:1 scale & saves it in dxf or dwg format) & bending drawings (extracts infor like, no. of pierces, no. of bends, total cutting length, surface area, weight etc.) for an individual part or assembly. it will save the bending drawings in pdf or edrawing etc. it also renames the deg or dxf files with prefix of suffix of thickness & its quantity in the assembly.
this is nothing to do with the program here. draftsman is intended to create actual drawings not profile/cutting drawings or the likes.
there are countless macros for creating flat pattern drawings and saving as dxf etc... this tool is aimed at creating the every day drawings of engineers.
luke,
how will the tool know what to section? when you select the section function will it ask the operator to select the components to section and create a section view of that? then how will it know what view that the section was derived from if the component selection are not a single or assembly part definition in the drawing tree that views have already been created for? will it create a new view for just that selection to derive the section from? if yes, could this not be the object to offset your section view from? i hope these question are not too confusing.
cadcam systems analyst
-solidworks office premium 2009 sp3.0
-solidworks simulation premium 2009 sp3.0
-solidworks flow simulation 2009 sp3.0
-2 cpu (fx-62), 2.0 gb of ram
-window xp pro sp2
-nvidia geforce 7950 gx2 (512mb) 6.14.11.6921
the tool will do a section by selecting a view that you add to the template, as well as the sketch lines your draw, and then at run-time you can have the option to choose which components to exclude from the section. they are the only true options of a section view, the rest is just pseudo effects that sw gives when users create them.