Can you mirror a drawing

You can mirror parts and assemblies. I found that joining parts of an assembly to a new non-featured part prior to mirroring has less problems than having SW attempt to re-apply mates in the mirrored assembly.

Then you can show a view or iso of that mirrored part or assembly on the drawing.

Keith

...or you can do the super cheat way like I used to on castings/forgings (eg: 2 body halves)

Create the drawing of one and note the surface that gets mirrored (eg. "surface -X-, see dash table")....

Create dash table that states:

P/N: xxxx-1 (as shown) P/N: xxxx-2 (opposite - part mirrored about surface -X-)

Granted, when we did this we were under a big deadline and as long as the mirror didn't have any additional features (drilled holes and such) after they were mirrored that had to be detailed....

This way also had the added benefit of not having to worry about a second drawing or sheet to update/rev should you have changes....

The tool maker hated us for it, but what the hell! ;)

Scott

Create new drawing. Drop in views (arrange views exactly like mirrored part (parent)). Add note referencing parent for specific notes, dims, finish, etc...

No.

That's common practice in aerospace where there are literally thousands of handed parts.

Yes, I did when I was fabbing parts. Had to think a little harder.

I wouldn't ~think~ it would be as big a deal with machined parts unless they are manually machining from the drawings(?).

This was one of the top 5 enhancement request at SolidWorks World last year. It wouldn't surprise me to see this new functionality available soon in a future release. It would be very nice to have.

remy mart> > Greetings everybody,

Really shouldn't be hard to do. Mirror views with annotations?

Another sorta interesting thought ... in concert with Y14.41 type model annotation practices it should be (?) rather simple to mirror views and shown annotations. Still some annotation clean-up req'd?

I think I'd still squawl about having to detail opposites, though.

I certainly do and will (kicking and screaming all the way).

I would suggest creating the second part as a mirror of the first part. This is relatively quick using the Mirror function. Then make a drawing of the mirror part, but don't include all of the dimensions which is the time consuming part. Instead, add a note that this is a mirror of the first part and reference the appropriate drawing/part number. All of the detailed dimensions can be found on the drawing of the first part, if needed. I do usually include bounding and critical dimensions on the drawing of the mirror part, but not adding all of the dimensions saves alot of time.

Depending on what the drawing is used for it may be to your company's advantage to fully detail both drawings. If the skill level of persons working on the parts (or supervising them) isn't too high, (Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't read the note) having two fully dim'd drawings may save some money over reworking or remaking half of the parts.

Like any good comic, you need to know your audience.

Diego

Diego,

You make a good point.

Just a curiosity - an interesting fact is that mirrored part is a mirrored part regardless of the selected reference surface. The selected surface affects only to the location of origin and the planes, which are only imaginary datums!

-h-

I agree with Diego. Having to look at drawing of part 1 to make part 2 is bound to lead to errors.

When I've machined my own parts _even with_ fully detailed mirrored drawings, I've still found there's room for confusion. You do them both in the same setup, therefore you have both drawings in front of you. They look basically the same, and it's easy enough to glance over at the wrong one for a hole location. I actually use highlighter on the prints sometimes when I don't think people will read the instructions.

Thanks for all the input, folks.

I spend part of the day at my desk on layouts (we are primarily a job shop, with some in-house design) and part of the day in the shop looking at orders I had my hands on, to answer questions, make suggestions, etc. It's remarkable that people often feel the most important thing they do is to keep moving, rather than taking the time to read the drawing(s) and think about how they are going to fabricate the part. I frequently use highlighter too on the shop drawings.

Now we are moving toward a paperless environment, with a tif or pdf file in place of paper drawings. I wonder whether a voice messge that plays when the drawing is opened would be effective to highlight key notes and dimensions.

Peace on earth. Diego

I previously had a very similiar job and we had extensive discussions about the possibility of going paperless. I suspect that adding voice messages to the appropriate files would be useful until the guys in the shop damage a speaker or simply turn down the volume for some reason. My opinion is that any notes that need highlighting should be unavoidable and not just temporary (as with a voice message that plays only when a file is opened). The shop where I worked relied heavily on notes written on the master drawings/documents. If a note on a print was ignored by the shop personnel, they heard about it. Any other source of instruction (word of mouth, notes separate from the master documents, etc.) was potentially followed by the shop personnel, but they knew it really wasn't binding and there were no penalties for not following "unofficial notes".