dealing with drawing revisions-best plan ?

Question

How do users deal with drawing revision issues ??

For example, I'm modelling up a set of very small parts that make a small assembly. I will then put them all into one large, say A1 drawing,as a set for manufacture.

When these go together, we find a small tweak or two, update the model, drawing automatically updates too, luvvly jubbly.

But if I edit some text to say revision 2, how can I check back at a later date what the first issue drawing was like?

Do I need to do a save-all-as into a revision 1 folder or something?

Or is there, as I suspect, a much more elegant way ?

thanks

Seth Renigar · Accepted Answer

I struggled with this for a long time also. I finally came up with the following as the best solution for us.

After I have completed the drawings on any project, I save each and every drawing as a PDF before I send them out to the shop. I add the text "-RevX" to the PDF filenames. During the manufacturing process, issues may arise that may require a slight design change or tweak. I will do the required adjustments and revisions to the drawings. Then, yet again, I save a PDF with the next revision in the filename before sending the new drawing out to the shop. This allows me to refer back to the original drawing if so required.

I foresee the ability to "embed" files in SW2005 a nice place to store these older PDF revisions, though I haven't tried it yet.

There are times when I may tweak a previously released drawing without actually up-revving it. An example may be if I just want to change the scale of a detail view to make it clearer and easier to read. No geometry or drawing details actually change. Therefore I won't go to the trouble to actually give it a new revision. I advise setting up your drawing templates to print a header/footer showing the date and time that it was printed. Using the header/footer date stamp, you can easily tell which printed drawing is the latest in these cases.

dealing with drawing revisions-best plan ?

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