Did Solid Works forget about Drawings?
- From: "Ed" <ed.thompson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Jul 2006 14:47:42 -0700
I continue to run into strange things and buggs with I make SW
drawings. Here is some of my current experience:
The project is a series of parts with truncated stub ACME threads which
are on a few degrees of taper, ( I know, this is a strange thread).
When I went to model such an unusual arrangement, it was relatively
easy to make the model. However, when I went to make a dimensioned
"detail" of the thread I ran into a number of problems:
The first was because the surfaces were all rouned and at strange
angles the dimension tool could not "grab" any surfaces, (or edge of
surfaces). I do not believe that this should have been much of a
challenge because to me a 2D view of a 3D part should be a FLAT 2D view
of the part and the edges should be nothing more then lines in the 2D
view. After a couple of hours of searching around, I found a reference
to using the "intersecting curve" tool, (found in the Sketch tool bar).
This worked fine but the dimension tool still would not grab onto any
of the edges/ points. I finally was able to project the intersecting
curve sketch using the "convert entities" onto the drawing plane which
the dimension tool finally was able to make connections. But, this was
not an easy process and definately not intuitive.
The second problem was that I didn't want to go through all of the
trouble repeating the above procedre a number of times. So, I thought
I would just make a copy of the detail. However, to make a simple
"detail" was also not as easy as one would expect. I tried cut and
pasting, making a block, and deleating the previous views so that I
could copy the drawing with a new drawing number, (leaving the old
detail in tact). But, none of this worked. Am I the only one that
uses standard "details"? Of course this is the purpose of blocks but
the block function absolutely would not accept the geometery!
Apparently because the geometery was referenced, (ie. by a detail view)
the block function could not recognize the geometery. Again, if the
views are representative of the parts, (ie. flattened) there should not
be a problem. I then attempted to delete the previous views, leaving
only the detail view but this wouldn't work either. Apparently detail
views and and section views have some sort of an unbreakable link to
the previous view, (at least I could not find where to break such a
link). I ultimately hid the previous view and placed the various parts
on top of the hidden view.
Again, all of this could have been easily solved if there were a
"flatten" command. In such an attempt I tried to save the drawing as a
"detached drawing". Which also didn't work.
The thing is that I have ran into problems with drawings that I would
consider to be fairly simple tasks fairly often. Does anyone at SW
every use this software. Apparently they do when it comes to modeling
but probably not drawings. I have also sent in bugg reports and some
fairly obvious things just don't seem to get addressed.
I am still using ACAD R14 for schematic drawigns because block move and
stretch are such basic commands. There really isn't any reason why SW
sketch shouldn't have these features as well. The whole idea around
sketches is that one can "free hand draw" a sketch and then start
placing constraints and dimensions later. A big part of making the
origional sketch should be the ability to block move and stretch,
(quick and easily) portions of the sketch around. Not having such a
basic command really makes me wonder.
Here is another basic feature missing. This is the concept of being
able to select specific features while in an assembly for making
measurments. The filtering tool attempts to fill in this void but I
find the filter tool to be very tedious to use. Probably mostly
because the filters stay on while in previous CAD programs the filter
was only valid for one selection while in the measurement mode. But
features such as center point of an edge, center or quadrant of a
circular edge, etc. are very important when making some measurements.
These tools are available in sketches etc but not in the assembly.
There have been times when the assembly measure tool just would not get
the critical measurement that I needed. As a work around, I made a
sketch, converted several edges where I could actually make a
measurement to some of these points. But, this is very tedious
compared to just making a measurement between two 3D points. The funny
thing is that certain things can be "grabbed" with the measurement tool
and filters, but, apparently someone decided that no one would ever
need to use some of the other types of points. These selections points
are available in the sketch environment? Just how does someone decide
that some points are important while others are not?
Is this just me? Or, are there some simple solutions to these issues?
Thanks,
Ed
.
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