AUTOCAD ISSUE

I don't deal with this stuff much, but it sounds like a font issue. Perhaps you have a font that he doesn't have, so his system substitutes its idea of the best font.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

I concur with Jerry. I'm also glad to have the opportunity to mention that this is one reason why I don't have a lot of patience with anal-retentive AutoCAD types who can't stand for an apostrophe to be out of place in their drawing title block. As if they didn't have other, more important things to be concerned about . . . like whether or not the tolerances in their drawings are going to get them what they need when they order their parts. God please spare me from having to deal with more people like this.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton WaterMark Design, LLC Charlotte, NC

Hi, Randy,

I suggest you convert the dwg format from AutoCAD 2002 into 2000 dxf, then send.

Regards,

Raymond

Hey Sporky, having lived on both sides of this issue, I have to say the problem is that Solidworks could improve their drafting functions to the point that apostrophes wouldn't be out of place. As a former Acad user, you never had to worry about things like that. Even with it's very usable current state, with respect to just making paper drawings, it's sort of like using a charcoal briq compared to a #2 pencil.

As for Randy's issue. Get used to it. It's Solidworks (or Autocad). Even the exact same fonts appear slightly different in each package. Case in point... using a font like Arial, the given dimensional length of a text string will be longer in Acad than it was in Solidworks drafting, I believe because each program kerns the text differently (fancy word relating to horizontal spacing of characters). Only option provided by Solidworks is to reduce the text ht. a little to shorten the string. Impossible to predict... hard to work around, but constantly present with every release. It might help if Autocad were to ever abandon their own native vector fonts and go completely with TrueType fonts, but don't count on that happening. Word and WordPerfect never really got the interoperability perfected either :)

- Eddy

Hey Eddy, I was an AutoCAD user for almost 10 years . . . from version 9 through AutoCAD 2000. AND I was a drawing checker -- for many years -- in a defense electronics environment where the military sponsor was anal-retentive about being anal-retentive. In fact, I was the resident guru of DoD-D-1000 (now superceded by something like Mil-Std-31000) and Mil-Std-100 and all their flowdown specs and standards covering technical data packages and configuration management, including ANSI Y14.5, in more than three major players in defense electronics contracts spanning almost 15 years. Let me make this clear, I made the rules in those companies about what was an acceptable technical data package and what were acceptable internal procedures regarding such things. I used to teach that stuff. The program managers and department heads came to ME to ask whether they were meeting their contract requirements. I KNOW how to play the game, probably better than anyone you know, but I DON'T respect the referees. SolidWorks drawing capabilities don't allow the same tweakability as does AutoCAD, but it doesn't amount to a hill of beans when it comes down to meaningful issues EXCEPT FOR THE LONGSTANDING ISSUES REGARDING OBJECT LINES THAT WON'T SHOW WHEN THEY SHOULD (ya hear that, SolidWorks?). And as my prior post made pretty clear, I have little tolerance for the opinions of some anal-retentive idiots who don't know beans about what a good technical data package should really be and should represent.

'Sporky'

Eddy Hicks wrote:

Hmm, this is starting to sound ugly but I've got to clarify my point. Compatibility with Autocad means a downstream Autocad user opening a Solidworks converted DWG should find it acceptable. And that cannot happen when text is running over the side of a title block. I'm not going to get into a resume war with you but we've shared similar roles, including the use of Acad and Solidworks (for me, acad since '86 and Swx since '96), standards setting, checking and policing etc.

DWG files created in other packages that open fine in Acad compared to Solidworks DWG files that don't open fine in Acad make it very hard to communicate with companies who hire us (my company) and require us to live to their standards. We know how to tolerance parts but we can't prevent titleblock text from falling off the edge of the DWG drawing unless we purposely tweak the text ht. in Swx. This ain't right and it has nothing to do with the users or the standards police.

- Eddy

OK, I understand your earlier post better. And BTW the last line of MY post was NOT aimed at you by any means . . . apologize that it seemed to appear that way (now that I look back at it). Still, a lot of the compatibility issues in the past have been AutoDesk's own fault . . . I don't know about AutoCAD 2004. AutoDesk had for many years (was notorious for) giving their own interpretation to fonts, and for a long time their TrueType compatibility was WAY off. Now you say that output from other CAD to AutoCAD are more compatible than SolidWorks. I can't speak to that issue, but I do know that I don't have any particular problems. The output from my drawings end up pretty nicely kerned and placed in AutoCAD 14 and 2000, and in those versions AutoDesk had yet to come to grips with full Windows application compatibility as far as fonts are concerned. I don't know what I do differently, but I do know that I tried a few combinations before settling on the title block that I have now, and my primary concern at that time was not how my drawings exported to AutoCAD (although I took note of it). I also know that SolidWorks has provided the ability to map your output via a file that acts in some sense like a macro. I don't use it, but it's there for you and should be useful for the problems you describe.

'Sporky'

Eddy Hicks wrote:

Hey Sporky, no offense previously taken. :)

We do have to use the mapping functions when exporting but as mentioned in a post of a few weeks ago, we've given up trying to finish the drawings in Solidworks for the worst of our very strictly standardized clients. We now export only the views with entities on their correct layers and from there we use Intellicad to dimension and notate. What a PITA! Thank goodness not all our clients require acad output.

And I completely agree... if Autocad was standardized better we would likely not have these issues but if the other copycat packages can cater to those bass ackward ways of Acad doing things then it would be helpful if Solidworks did too. Have you ever noticed the dozen or so dimension styles that get created when you export a fully dimensioned drawing to Acad? Underneath the surface it's Acad's fault for having a lame dimension style system but that's the stuff that drives our overly standardized clients crazy. Those same drawings done in Acad or Intellicad have one or two dimension styles.

- Eddy

This very font issue always irked me because even if you sent a DWG to another ACAD user if they don't have the font the print goes to hell. I only used the default SHX fonts that I had been using since 1991 because it was the only way to ensure that the print would display correctly. An even with SWX I fear using any font that's not standard with M$ Windows for the same reason, though I have not verified if this fear is just. Of course now the point is often mute because ACAD, SWX of other you can get programs to print to PDF and then you can ensure the prints transfer properly (of course the geo data cant be measured reliably but sometimes that's actually a benefit)

Yes, I agree. But I am a horrible speller and that is just the way it is. :)

A handbook of drafting rules and principles. By Howard C. Nelson

"88. Spell words correctly. Misspelled words cause drawings to appear to be unreliable."